


The Principle of Exclusion

by seperis



Series: The Principle of Exclusion [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-13
Updated: 2007-01-13
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:28:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seperis/pseuds/seperis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I didn't rip his virginity from his clinging arms like some kind of evil seducer," Rod tells the floor bitterly. "He lied."  Set in the AU from McKay and Mrs. Miller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Principle of Exclusion

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to cathexys, mecurtin, thepouncer, hetrez_z, and eleveninches for beta, argument, clarification, and helping me make this work, eleveninches for the title, and svmadelyn for constant cheerleading.. If there are any mistakes, that's because I wasn't paying attention to their advice

This picks up from my new Mensa AU parody snippets and takes them in another direction.

For the short recap--Colonel John Sheppard is thrown into AU Atlantis, meets and is freaked out by Alter!Dr. John Sheppard, sleeps with Rod, and beats Sheppard at chess. Later, after Colonel Sheppard leaves, Rod gets Dr. Sheppard drunk and seduces him.

Now that *that's* out of the way, fic!

* * *

When Rod comes into the messhall at six am and sees Sheppard having breakfast with Ronon, he's almost sure the world must be ending.

It's not so much Ronon. Ronon has a freakish and completely illogical fondness for Sheppard that bewilders everyone. Rod finds it unnatural and disturbing, but goes with it because that's the best method, he's found, to lower his blood alcohol level to something short of fatal. Occasionally Rod's seen them work out, with Sheppard disdainfully terrible at hand-to-hand and Ronon at the end of each lesson patiently explaining to him how to quickly run away. Rod hadn't thought advice like that would be needed every time, but this is Sheppard, so really, not that much of a surprise.

So it's not Ronon. It's that getting Sheppard out of bed before second shift is unknown without an amphetamine-driven emergency (the day the ZPM blew out) or that ridiculous overreaction to Duranda (which Rod still doesn't want to talk about ever again). So this is not good.

A hangover is no way to start a morning, which is why Rod's swearing off alcohol as soon as is reasonably possible. Rubbing at the tight, bright pain blooming in the center of his forehead, he squints dolefully toward the far side of the messhall as he takes his tray, ignoring the wave from Cadman and absolutely _hating_ the guy that slams into his shoulder with a "Hey, Rod!" in surround sound.

"Morning, excuse me," he says automatically as the man gives him a final thump, trying to match face to name and failing completely.

Looking around the messhall, there are a lot of places he could sit, but his feet carry him toward Sheppard anyway.

"Morning," Rod hears himself say in what he's sure is a perfectly normal voice, but Ronon gives him a look that tells him it didn't work, that he does in fact look like he just might pass out. If only.

To his horror, Rod realizes Sheppard has one leg folded underneath him, for easier not-sitting-flat-on-hard-chairs. Ronon's mouth quirks in a smile as Rod forces himself to sit down beside Sheppard and stare blankly at reconstituted scrambled eggs and Athosian bagels, a lot like regular bagels except for the fact that they taste like ham. "Sheppard."

Sheppard gives a five second pause, the better to stare at his sweet roll like it can calculate pi, before lifting his head with raised eyebrows and a blank look. There are dark circles under his eyes and a tighter cast to his mouth than usual, which is basically a neon sign stating Sheppard hasn't slept yet. And--yes, there's a hickey. God. He's got to stop doing that.

"I'm done," Sheppard tells Ronon before standing up gracelessly and nearly knocking his chair over. It's got to be deliberate, Rod thinks; no one can be that clumsy 

accidentally

. Gathering his laptop bag, Sheppard walks out with a curious short step that might as well be a public announcement that, yes, someone fucked him but good.

When Rod stops watching (because even though he's being a bitch and it's not even dawn yet, Sheppard's preternaturally hot), he turns around to see Ronon looking at him with an expression that on anyone else might be--but can't be--disapproval. "What?" Rod says nervously, trying not to twitch. Ronon's expression doesn't change, and he goes back to his pile of pancakes with an almost silent grunt. "Okay, _what_?"

Ronon shrugs expansively, taking another bite. "He seemed upset this morning."

Rod's eyes narrow. There's something disturbingly _worried_ in Ronon's voice. "He's up six hours before his usual time," he points out, trying to look less guilty and more--something not guilty. Whatever the hell that is. "I'm surprised he's functional."

Ronon's mouth curves down in a frown. "He's having a rough time."

"What? Losing to John in chess?" And oh God, that disapproving look again, along with an edge of irritation, and Rod's reminded suddenly that Ronon hadn't cared for the Colonel at all, in his silent, forbidding, avoiding-all-human-contact way. "Are you feeling sorry for him?"

Ronon growls something that's probably not polite, but Rod's a nice guy and pretends not to hear it. "A rough time," Ronon states firmly, giving him a significant look before standing up, and Rod feels a strange sense of cognitive dissonance when he realizes there's still food left on Ronon's plate. That happens just about as often as Sheppard being awake before noon--which is to say, never. "You should think about it."

"Think about _what_?"

But Ronon's already walking away, and Rod is left staring at the far wall with a feeling that his day isn't going to get any better.

* * *

The headache eventually recedes, though the discomfort doesn't, leaving him jumpier than he's used to, fighting the urge to toss the most recent personnel evaluations and bury himself in something involving fusion and Ancient tech.

Rod doesn't see Sheppard for most of the morning; Sheppard was assigned early in their tenancy of Atlantis to his own lab, far away from the general population. The given reason--weak but the best he could do with Zelenka and half the staff promising mutiny--was Sheppard's projects were more dangerous and in need of isolation. In actuality, like at the SGC, Sheppard was an active danger to himself with a personality best described as toxic and the hordes of people willing to kill him in his sleep for a bar of chocolate.

Isolation suits Sheppard.

Rod assigned him a lab assistant each time the _Daedalus_ docked, fully aware that said assistant would be on the voyage back in three weeks time or graduate to a gate team. No one survived Dr. John Sheppard's lab without scars.

A little before lunch, though, it occurs to Rod that he _hasn't_ heard from Sheppard, and this morning's breakfast pokes uncomfortably into his memory. Leaving Zelenka to oversee the new _Daedalus_ personnel (the SGC had somehow forgotten to send a single lab tech this time, which means Sheppard will have to go without), Rod wanders down the short hall, stopping at Sheppard's door.

Taking a breath, he firms up his most pleasant expression and waves a hand at the crystals. He knows that the door won't open without either Sheppard's permission or an override, so he braces himself for the override.

But the door opens quickly, so quickly that he's not quite ready to see Sheppard, miles of overfilled lab tables surrounding him; several disassembled, empty ZPM casings; six laptops running various programs in Ancient and Asgard; the slower interface to the Atlantis database scrolling equations so fast that Rod can't read them; and Sheppard himself standing rail-straight in front of a mess of gold and red glass and a tangle of interface cables.

Despite himself, Rod has to pause to look around. The last time he was in here, it was to make sure Sheppard had survived a small lab explosion. "Hey."

Sheppard blinks once. "What do you want?"

Rod focuses his attention on Sheppard's laptop and the almost-ZPM. "How close are you?"

Sheppard pushes the safety goggles up, forcing his hair to bristle unattractively around the edges. Hazel eyes study him coolly for a moment before he answers. "Three weeks at the most. I'm busy. Go away."

There are so many ways that he could approach this, but Sheppard's utter blankness makes every one of them impossible. "Just checking in," Rod says easily, leaning into the table with what he hopes is an open expression. Sheppard's face doesn't change. Right. "You usually come by the main lab once in a while."

"I didn't need the main interface," Sheppard answers, pulling over a microscope and setting it with quick fingers, not bothering to look down. Sheppard's calibrations are always perfect the first time, just like his programs, just like his math; Rod would love to know who trained Sheppard so thoroughly that the most basic tasks of a lab are as ingrained as breathing. "If my calculations are correct, the remainder of the work will be the equivalent of checking for loose screws." Sheppard ducks his head, looking into the eyepiece before stepping back and typing something one handed into the laptop beside him.

On the screen behind him, the image pulls up--a mess of crystals and microscopic interface cabling, strung so fine that breath could break it. Hybridization of Ancient tech with the most advanced interface programs that the Asgard can offer, the culmination of the last year of Sheppard's life in an unattractive bulk of spare parts. 

Rod tries to appreciate what he's seeing, but it's hard when they have a real ZPM, all elegant efficiency and carefully contained power. "So your simulations--"

"One tenth the power output of an Ancient-built ZPM," Sheppard says shortly, expression melting into something more bitter than smug. "But workable with the correct interface to translate--"

"Who's building the interface?" Rod thinks he should know this, but he honestly can't think who on earth would have agreed to work directly with Sheppard.

"Kavanagh's engineering it," Sheppard says, with a curl of his lip. Rod's not sure if it's personal or the fact that Sheppard's forced to depend on someone besides himself for something so important to his project. "The first attempt was an utter failure. Did I forget to mention I'm busy? Or are you just deaf from listening to the sound of your own voice?"

"We'll set up testing as soon as you're sure," Rod says, making himself continue to smile, trying to project confidence in the design. "When will you--"

"Three weeks," Sheppard says slowly, enunciating every word. "I've already emailed you twice for permission to use the secondary ZPM banks for the initial--"

"Right." He had. "I'll tell Dr. Weir so we can be ready." Ready for whatever this does. Rod waits, but Sheppard just looks at him, offering less than nothing. Talking to Sheppard is always like talking to a brick wall. A Mensa-qualified, exceedingly vicious brick wall with the ability to build weapons of mass destruction in its spare time. At least until Rod put a stop to it. "Ah, about last night--"

Oh, wrong thing to say; Sheppard's entire body goes stiff. "I'd rather our off-hour activities not infringe on our professional relationship," Sheppard says frostily. His spine is reaching new levels of straightness. Rod wonders if there's actually metal sewn under his skin or something.

"Of course," Rod says quickly, soothingly, and watches in dismay as Sheppard pushes away the microscope, almost knocking it off its stand. "I just wanted to make sure that you're--I mean." He wants to say, Go to Carson, but the humiliation potential for them both is astronomical. Besides, he knows he didn't actually *hurt* Sheppard. It was just very, very bad sex. "I wanted to say that if you're--"

Sheppard stares at him like he's grown a second head.

"Well then. It was--we'll just forget about it, won't we?" Rod says desperately. "Bad sex happens, and you don't--don't dwell on it. We won't dwell on it. And no, of course it won't affect our professional relationship."

"Good," Sheppard says, voice clipping shorter. "I have simulations to complete and--"

"Yes, exactly. I'm glad we had this talk," Rod says, already backing toward the door. Catching himself, he makes himself smile, slow and easy--nothing strange here, nothing to worry about--turning to a door that opens before he even has a chance to think at it. Stepping into the hall, Rod takes a deep breath, letting it out in a rush of relief.

That had gone pretty well. Smiling more naturally, he turns back toward his lab, wondering if Zelenka's free for lunch.

* * *

Zelenka's not, but Dr. Carrie Strauss from engineering *is*, and Rod takes the opportunity to sidle up to her table, watching the dark eyes flicker up and then away quickly as he sits down across from her.

"Dr. Strauss," he says, letting himself smile as she blushes. "Mind if I join you?"

"Of course not, Dr. McKay," she says, eyes fixed on her fork, still buried in mashed potatoes. "And it's Carrie."

"Rod," he says, extending his hand. "I've heard good things about your work from Dr. Josh Gingrich since you arrived. We're very glad to have you."

"Thank you." Her handshake is firm but not too firm, soft palms and long, elegant fingers. She takes a bite of her potatoes, eyes averted as she chews self-consciously, then swallows quickly. "This is an amazing city, Dr. M--Rod."

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" The salad is terrible, but that's not new. As she starts talking about her work in--polymers? He'll have to read those evaluations soon--Rod nods at every pause, noticing Sheppard being herded into the messhall by Ronon. Not an unusual circumstance--Sheppard forgets food, sleep, hygiene, and occasionally English when he's been working on something--but the way Sheppard seems to be digging his heels into the floor is new. As a rule, Sheppard tends to at least fake compliance, due to Ronon's amazingly selective hearing and ability to physically carry him wherever he wants Sheppard to go. 

It had only taken a couple of times being dumped into a messhall chair off Ronon's back for Sheppard to get the message.

As Ronon manhandles Sheppard into the line, Rod hears what is definitely a comment in Ancient regarding Ronon's antecedents. Ronon just smirks, shoving a tray in front of Sheppard before getting his own, and Sheppard grudgingly complies, showing more enthusiasm when the jello comes into view. As Sheppard swings around, looking for a table suitably remote from human contact, the hazel eyes meet his.

For a second, something new crosses Sheppard's face, then he's turning, almost dropping his tray, crossing to the far side of the messhall. Ronon, with a quick glance in Rod's direction, ambles after him.

"Rod?" A soft hand rests on his wrist, and Rod jerks his attention back to--Carrie, right.

"Sorry, a member of my department showed up for lunch on time for once." Over the chatter of the other diners, there's no way that Rod can hear what they're saying, but Sheppard is making unhappy motions with his jello. Ronon patiently takes it away, pointing significantly at his plate, and Sheppard starts to eat with sullen slowness.

Carrie's eyes follow his, and the automatic reactions--crinkle of nose, narrowing of eyes--are so familiar that Rod realizes he's eating with another of Sheppard's deadly enemies. He has to hand it to Sheppard; she's only been here a couple of months, and he's already managed to alienate her. "Dr. Sheppard."

Rod takes a deep breath, holding his smile. "He's a brilliant scientist."

"So I've been told," she says, almost spitting. Rod fights the urge to ask what Sheppard has done now. "I was assigned to build the new interface for Dr. Sheppard's ZPM project."

Oh Jesus. He doesn't want to know. He doesn't. "Didn't get along, did you?"

Carrie stabs at her mystery meat hard enough to create a small geyser of gravy. "According to Dr. Sheppard, my understanding of the principles of engineering are insufficient to make me fit to build a *dog house*, much less the oh-so-important-to-the-future-of-science ZPM substitute he's been trying--and failing, if the thing I was forced to measure is an example--to build."

Rod thinks he can actually feel waves of rage coming off her. Time to redirect. 

Reaching across the table, Rod gently moves her hand from her fork, running a thumb casually along the side of her palm, getting her full attention. "It can be challenging to work with Dr. Sheppard," he says, with a knowing look that makes her mouth soften. "Maybe I can help you relax tonight. You said you haven't been around the entire city yet?"

Her mouth quirks up at one corner. Pushing her hair back, she raises her eyebrow. "There really hasn't been time."

"I could take you on a private tour," he says, running his nails along her palm, and her fingers curling into his. Her lips curve into a smile, lashes sweeping down. "Some dinner, then perhaps a glance at some of Atlantis' more unusual sights?"

The way she smiles at him is answer enough.

* * *

"Ronon, I swear I will poison you with mercury in your water if you don't. Stop. Fucking. With. Me."

Rod freezes as he goes by the meditation slash practice room on his way for more coffee. The stained glass door is set at semi-opaque, so Rod can see shapes inside, identifying Sheppard by the way he's sitting on the floor in an awkward heap, Ronon looming over him.

"You won't learn if you don't try." Ronon's voice is calm, but there's an edge to it that Rod's never heard before. Coming closer, Rod fights the vague guilt that comes with eavesdropping--Sheppard is on his team and is, technically, his subordinate. Knowing what's going on with him is vital to surviving him. "And you aren't trying."

"Huh, let me get out some blueprints of a nuclear reactor and watch you read them," Sheppard says. "No, wait, you *can't*. And I can't do *this*. Why we even bother--"

"I could, if I were taught," Ronon says with such utter patience that Rod's almost ashamed of himself for talking to Kavanagh again this afternoon about the feasibility of Sheppard's almost-ZPM. "And you can learn this if you'd try. It's not so hard."

"My skills are wasted on learning--"

"Might've helped when Kolya had you."

Rod freezes, hand rubbing absently against the inside of his arm as Sheppard goes still. "If I'd had my gun--"

"You won't always." Ronon pauses, and Rod wonders when Ronon took the time to go through the mission reports. Their missions are almost always in pursuit of Ancient technology on more peaceful planets--leave the violent natives to Lorne and his Marines--but the Genii are their shining exception to the rule. Rod rubs the scar tissue absently, watching as John flounders to his feet.

"I'm never without it now."

Which is true. Sheppard carries a nine millimeter in his backpack wherever he goes, off-world and in Atlantis. Rod and Dr. Weir stopped trying to talk him out of it a long time ago. 

"You could be disarmed. Think about it." There's another pause, longer and more thoughtful. "I think you should start working with Teyla," Ronon says, and Rod realizes he's missed part of the conversation. Leaning into the wall, he frowns. Teyla, apart from her missions with Rod's team and her diplomatic work with Dr. Weir, has never seemed to have much interaction with the Atlantean population.

"Teyla?" Sheppard says her name like he has trouble remembering who she is. "I don't think--"

"I think she'd like it," Ronon says amiably, and Rod can hear the sounds of Ronon packing up. "I just started working with her--"

"She kicks your ass." Sheppard sounds a little too gleeful about it. Rod supposes he can't blame him--Rod trains with Ronon once a week. He gets a kick out of Teyla's ability to put Ronon on his knees, too.

"That, too." That it never seems to bother Ronon is a wonder to Rod. "She used to instruct the young among the Athosians, and now only the more advanced students come to her for training."

"So I'm supposed to assist with her thwarted maternal instincts?" 

Ronon shrugs. "She's kind of weird, but she's a good fighter." Ronon pauses, long enough for Rod to wonder if the conversation is over, before Ronon continues, a little too casually, "And you know she put Colonel Sheppard on the floor five times when he was here."

Rod leans a little closer. He doesn't remember John ever training with Teyla.

"You say that as if I should care." Sheppard's voice, however, lacks heat. "Ronon--"

"I'm just saying, she's good, and she's used to beginners, from what she said." Ronon picks up something from the floor.

"Somehow, I just don't think this is about me." Sheppard pauses, sounding amused, the way he is around no one but Ronon. "You're still arguing, which means that you've already invited her, and I'm supposed to go along with it because you'll make me come anyway."

Rod can almost see Ronon's pleased smile. "Pretty much, yeah."

Rod hears the sound of Ronon coming toward the door and backs off, almost fumbling his coffee cup before he starts moving as quickly as possible toward the labs. Behind him, he hears the door open, Ronon's voice echo down the hall in cheerful mockery, Sheppard's derisive reply, and makes it to the labs in time to see Zelenka frown at how long it took him to get his coffee.

Poor Teyla, Rod thinks. She has no idea what she's getting into.

* * *

Carrie is as agreeable as Rod had thought she'd be, and Rod leaves out of her quarters early enough to not be caught by first shift. Wandering down the residential quarters, Rod sees Sheppard, still in his horrific idea of a uniform, coming toward him, rubbing his head absently, dark grooves worn beneath his eyes.

He doesn't seem to know where he's going, knocking into the wall, and Rod wonders suddenly how many days Sheppard's been going without sleep. "Sheppard?"

Sheppard's head comes up so abruptly he stumbles, bracing a hand on the wall, blinking away the glaze of exhaustion with disconcerting speed. "Dr. McKay?" His voice cracks oddly as he straightens so fast Rod can almost hear muscles snapping to keep up. "What are--oh."

Rod frowns, then remembers where he just came from. Yeah. "Were you running simulations all night?"

Sheppard face is so expressionless that you could solve unified theory on it with space to spare. "I had an idea," he says. "I need to--"

"Get some sleep." Rod watches Sheppard's face twitch slightly. "Take tomorrow off. You've been pulling too many all-nighters."

"It hasn't decreased my efficiency," Sheppard grates out, like Rod just accused him of blowing up his lab again. "Besides, you seem to do just fine on lack of sleep." There's a nasty edge of insinuation that creeps under Rod's skin, and he feels himself flush, though he hasn't been embarrassed about sex since middle school. Especially since he's the only one of the two of them having sex around here.

"How I spend off-hours is no business of yours, Dr. Sheppard," Rod says coolly.

"It was at least once," Sheppard shoots back, and Rod feels himself flush more. He forces down the flicker of anger, cooling it beneath a careful smile.

"It was a mistake," Rod says, keeping his voice even. "And as you said earlier, neither of us want this mishap to infringe on our professional relationship. I think forgetting about it would be the best course of action."

Sheppard stares at him for a second, studying with the narrowed focus he turns on his work, searching for the single flaw he can fix, the problem he can solve, make everything match up as neatly as an equation. People aren't like that, Rod had learned that early on. Years of practice have taught him what to say, how to say it, to smile, when to walk away, but it's like Sheppard never learned those things.

Then the searching gaze is jerked away like a spotlight going off.

"Yeah, you're right," Sheppard says softly, head turning away as he pushes off the wall. Without another word, Sheppard walks by him, straighter and stiffer than Rod can ever remember seeing him.

For a vivid second, watching Sheppard's retreating back, Rod feels something--a second missed, a moment passed--but it's gone, and Sheppard vanishes into his quarters.

Rod checks his watch and sighs. It's only two hours until alpha shift. Somehow, he's got to make it through the day without passing out.

Coffee. He needs coffee.

* * *

When Rod was chosen to be Chief Science Officer for the expedition, the best part had been being allowed to choose his own staff The bad part is the fact that he *had* chosen Sheppard and really has no one to blame for this mess but himself. 

A mess now highlighted by Sheppard, weirdly wired and more awake than Rod could ever have anticipated, currently slumped at the main computer interface. With Simpson. Touching him.

"...relationship like this," Simpson is saying gravely from her stool, one hand resting on Sheppard's knee in a way that isn't purely platonic. Rod takes two steps across the lab before he can stop himself, wondering if there was something in that coffee other than coffee. "And considering the circumstances, you have every right to feel hurt."

Sheppard's normal scowl of disdain has miraculously been replaced with something that's--Jesus, Sheppard looks *human*. "I'll think about it," Sheppard says with a huge sigh before turning back to his laptop with a dejected slump, the very picture of depressed-but-bucking-up-beneath-the-pressure bravery. Rod watches as Simpson turns away, sights him, eyes narrowing, before she gets to her feet. "I'll be right back, *John*," she says with undue emphasis, and Sheppard, the conniving bastard, just nods, slumping further over his keyboard as though even his spine has lost the will to live.

Wow. Rod hadn't even known Sheppard *could* slump. "Simpson--what are you--" But one small hand is locked under his elbow, propelling him into an empty storage room that Rod knows for a fact the women use for poker nights. "Are you okay?"

"Have you talked to him today?" Simpson demands, and Rod's heart actually stops before she continues. "He looks terrible! He's refusing coffee!"

Rod stares at her, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Simpson, who once tried to drown Sheppard off the east pier and claim it as an unfortunate run-in with a whale, is staring up at him with accusing eyes. "What, exactly, does that have to do with me?"

Simpson snorts. "You're teammates, right?" Her voice drops, taking on an edge that reminds Rod of two ex-girlfriends. "Rod," she says, sounding patient and insane, "obviously, something's wrong. I think something happened. With a person," she clarifies, looking a little stunned herself. "A person he has a relationship with."

"Oh?" Rod says. Simpson frowns at the way his voice does a two octave break. "So--Sheppard--you think Sheppard's in a relationship?"

Simpson sniffs. "Sounds more like someone was leading him on and then dumped him." Rod tries to reconcile the worried way Simpson keeps glancing toward the lab with the fact that she went after Sheppard with a screwdriver last week and had to be pried off by two Marines. "That *other* Sheppard coming here didn't help, either," she says venomously, like she hadn't been following the Colonel around practically offering him her uterus. 

"What, and you think Sheppard was dumped because this completely hypothetical person liked John more?" Rod's not sure how this conversation even ended up in this place, but he wants it over with now. "Look, Simpson, you don't even *like* him." 

Apparently, that's the wrong thing to say, because Simpson goes as straight as if she'd borrowed Sheppard's freaking titanium backbone. 

"We've had problems in the past," Simpson says stiffly, eyes bright with righteous indignation. "But right now he needs help. And in case you forgot, he's still working day and night on the updates to the new design of the ZPM for field testing. I would think *you* of all people would show a little concern for a member of your department who's having a difficult time." 

Simpson frowns before turning on a heel and going back out into the lab. Rod watches as she gets a cup of coffee and takes it to Sheppard (something that before today, he would have sworn she'd do over her own dead body), one hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

When Sheppard looks up with a hurt-but-brave smile, Rod realizes something's gone very wrong on Atlantis.

****

By the end of the day, Rod's come to the conclusion that a dangerous hallucinogen has been introduced into the air filters, so he spends two hours and thirteen minutes running diagnostics on the environmental controls while watching Sheppard on a security feed. Seated in the messhall, Sheppard makes horrible and awkward conversation while slumping like a broken puppy for everyone--and Rod means *everyone*--to wander close and, to Rod's disbelief, offer sympathy.

The stories go like this:

Sheppard was dumped, was seduced and dumped, was gotten drunk, seduced, and dumped, was tricked into sex and dumped by--

A Marine, a scientist, an offworlder, a civilian, a close friend, someone *very mean* who--

Broke his heart, took his virginity, did both at the same time, called the wrong name, called the right name to the wrong person, hurt his feelings, made him cry.

"Did you say cry?" Rod says in disbelief when he overhears the botanists in the hall talking worriedly about how little Sheppard had eaten at dinner, seeming to forget Sheppard *never* eats much at dinner and lives off of the souls of those he tortures. Getting a dirty look, Rod moves past them quickly, mumbling something he hopes they'll assume is an apology while they go back to whispering.

The scary part is, Sheppard's still an *asshole*, but apparently, true love makes it all acceptable, and Sumner looks at Sheppard with sympathy before offering him his special stash of whiskey, and okay, that's *it*.

"What are you doing?" Rod says as Sheppard's door opens, but he's constitutionally incapable of walking in the room unless he's invited. Sheppard, armed with his cello--Rod still has no idea how on earth he got that through the Stargate when they first arrived--looks up mid-sonata to give Rod the most expressionless glare he's ever earned. "What are you telling people?"

Sheppard sets the cello aside. Only Sheppard, Rod thinks, would relax with an instrument almost as big as he is. "I'm in the middle of a transitional stage in my development," he says, face perfectly blank and eyes perfectly serious, but for some wild reason--call it a guess--Rod just doesn't believe it.

"You're telling people I practically date raped you then dumped you *bleeding* outside my door while calling you names," Rod answers flatly.

Sheppard's mouth twitches. "I never said it was you."

Rod takes a deep breath, realizing that a.) this conversation really, really shouldn't happen in the hall and b.) Sheppard's gone nuts. All of Atlantis has gone nuts. Coming inside at Sheppard's sardonic nod, Rod waves the door closed behind him. "You don't have to! People will guess!"

"They think you're pining after the Colonel," Sheppard says coolly. "They're all aware no one could *ever* live up to the wonderful Colonel Sheppard. And consoling yourself with random, and let me add, woefully *stupid* engineers while you--how did they put it?" Sheppard's eyes darken maliciously. "Nurse your *broken* heart."

Rod squints into Sheppard's face, utterly bewildered. "Are you--are you *jealous*?"

 Sheppard flicks his laptop shut, looking thoughtful. "Yeah. I think I am."

Oh. Rod really hadn't seen that one coming. "Sheppard" he says slowly, trying to figure out what on earth he's supposed to say to that, "you really don't have anything to be jealous of. And--wait, why would you even be jealous?" Because Rod doesn't date. Even preternaturally beautiful but lousy in bed mathematicians.

Sheppard gently puts the cello away before levering himself awkwardly from the bed, pacing toward Rod with an intent expression that makes him back straight into the door. Sheppard doesn't stop, not until he's less than half an inch away, wide hazel eyes holding Rod's.

"I never went through an immature adolescent crush phase," Sheppard says seriously. "I was too busy being a productive member of society to pant after whatever random bipedal lifeform crossed my field of vision. But after talking to Heightmeyer, I was thinking that for the sake of my psychological welfare and emotional development--"

"You are using words associated with social sciences and not dying on the spot like you always claimed you would," Rod points out, feeling a cold finger of dread run up and down his spine, and not in a sexy way, like with an ice cube. "You realize that, right?"

"--I'd better get that out of the way." Sheppard braces a hand against the door frame, leaning close. "So. I'm having it now."

The door opens so suddenly Rod has no time to catch himself, tumbling backward with a spine-jarring ache as Sheppard, arms crossed, watches him with a look of smug glee.

"And you know what, *Meredith*? You haven't seen *anything* yet."

* * *

He's right.

It takes two days--two horrible, terrible, surreal days--but Sheppard's campaign takes off like *fireworks*.

Somehow--Rod has no idea how he's doing it, why people are falling for it, how *stupid* Atlantis actually is--Sheppard manages to reinterpret his entire time on Atlantis. Suddenly, Sheppard is not a narcissistic asshole with delusions of grandeur--and Rod can't even think the words without wanting whiskey, which that bastard Sumner gave to Sheppard, damn him--but a fragile, misunderstood genius with terrible social skills. *And a shattered heart*.

"I never thought it could happen to me," Sheppard says earnestly over lunch to two female Marines, three scientists, and Dr. Heightmeyer while wearing a puce shirt and striped navy pants. It's a new high in Sheppard's repertoire of horrific color disasters. "But I suppose, in a way, I deserve it--"

"No one deserves that, John," Heightmeyer says earnestly, one hand gently covering his wrist. From two tables down with Ronon, Rod tries to pretend like he's not listening to every word. "There are plenty of people who will appreciate you for who you are."

Rod wonders if she appreciates the sheer inanity of what is pouring out of her mouth. "I don't believe this," Rod mutters into his winter vegetable mix in varying shades of purple. 

The elbow in his side drags Rod's gaze to Major Lorne, who's been paying way too much attention to the entire drama for a man who's second in command of the Atlantis military contingent and certainly has better things to do. "Rod, really. Just because you're content to jump from bed to bed doesn't mean that other people don't get attached." Lorne frowns, stabbing at a close-to-carrot. "I'd like to get my hands on the guy who dumped him like that," Lorne mumbles, and Rod has to turn around and look, because last time he checked, Lorne thought they should trade Sheppard to the Genii for beans.

"You're kidding." Rod can't keep the incredulity out of his voice. Lorne stares defensively into his coffee.

"Look, so he's a little bad with people--"

"He singlehandedly started a war with the Hoff," Rod says blankly.

"That doesn't mean he deserves being used like that." Lorne sighs, setting down his fork and staring morosely at his potatoes. Rod has a terrible, terrible feeling about this. "I wonder if it's too early."

He doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to know. He doesn't-- "For what?"

Lorne's eyes fix on Sheppard's back with an unmistakable look. "To ask him out."

Ronon, sitting across from Lorne, is staring at his plate (overloaded with those weird silver shellfish that they found on the mainland), and Rod would swear that Ronon is smiling.

* * *

Ronon turns out to be an *awesome* drinking buddy. Rod can only wonder why he never knew this before.

"Major Lorne!" Rod says, waving toward the door, outside of which is a hall, down which is a balcony, where no doubt Lorne is feeding Sheppard nutritionally balanced fruit bowls and telling him how he will never, ever get him drunk and steal his virginity. Which Rod *totally did not do*. Mostly. "A *flyboy*. A *goon*. Who is not a genius! He went *out with him*!"

Ronon agreeably hands him the bottle after only taking a sip. Ronon's cool like that. "You do that stuff."

"I--" Rod says, trying to sit up and failing dramatically. Staring at the ceiling, he shakes his head and watches the newfound colors move. "I am indigrinimate--incingrimate--*easy*. I am *easy*. And I don't *date*. I have *sex*. This? This is a *date*."

"Right," Ronon says, nodding, and Rod watches the dreadlocks bounce. "And you don't like it."

"Damn *straight*. Seriously, Lorne? He can barely turn on his laptop. Who is Sheppard going to discuss computer architecture with? What could they possibly talk about?"

"Maybe they talk about other things."

God, Ronon is *stupid*. "Have you ever heard Sheppard talk about anything outside his work?"

Ronon scratches at his head. "Sure." Rod blinks at the easy shrug. "Lots of things. Movies, books. How much he hates stick practice with Teyla. Good jumper-weather."

Rod tries and fails to visualize Sheppard *chatting*. "You're lying. Why would he talk about that? Why to you?"

Ronon shrugs again. "Maybe because I don't watch him on video feeds when he's meditating?"

It takes a few seconds for that to sink in, but when it does, Rod can feel all the blood in his body desperately try to drain somewhere safe, because--Oh God. Oh dear *God*. Rod sits straight up, eyes wide. "You--how did--he *knows*?"

Ronon nods agreeably.

"But--but Lorne's the one that set that up," Rod says sickly, trying to struggle to his feet. He should have known. He should have *guessed*. "I have to--"

A big hand drops on his shoulder, and he's breathless, flat on his back on the bed. "I think it's a little too late for that."

* * *

Rod goes in personally to reprogram the computers hours before Sheppard would even *imagine* getting up, which somehow means that Sheppard is already there, in what appears to be Lorne's sweatpants and an Air Force t-shirt, too-long hair in his face and still flushed from--

Oh, Rod just can't go there.

"What are you--" But Sheppard holds something up as he types, and curious, Rod comes over to see that somehow, Sheppard's got the senior staff command codes. "Jesus."

Jesus, in that, wow, one, Sheppard somehow got Lorne to give him command codes, and two, Sheppard matches. Mostly. This close, Rod can smell him, sweat and two kinds of aftershave, and something musky beneath that's sex, because apparently, Sheppard's standards have dropped dramatically. "Excuse me, what are you doing?"

"Burning out every camera in that area," Sheppard says with a bitter little grin, slim fingers blurring over the keyboard. Sheppard has elegant hands, long-fingered and fine-knuckled, made for fine work. He's weirdly loose--loose in a very Sheppard way, that is, but more relaxed and comfortable than Rod's ever seen him. Rod shivers as the hazel eyes flicker up and look into his, mouth red and swollen and so pretty that Rod's leaning toward him without meaning to.

"How long have you known?" Rod asks as each of the four cameras go down. Good-bye three in the afternoon break; hello bitter labmates. 

"For a while." Sheppard kicks back from the desk, stumbling slightly as he gets to his feet, which look small and bare on the smooth lab floor.

"You never said anything."

Sheppard shrugs into his laptop bag, but the green eyes flicker upward just long enough for Rod to see the edge of something dangerously raw. "I couldn't decide what was more humiliating. My coworkers watching me, or having to *ask* them for my own privacy. I took the lesser of two evils. Until now." Crumpling the tiny piece of paper in his pocket, Sheppard walks out with his usual jarring stride, and Rod looks uncomfortably at the empty monitor.

* * *

The lab is normal the next day, or as normal as it gets when everyone has been caught looking at other people naked unawares. Despite the fact that Sheppard spends the whole morning in the Chair room working on power modulation with Zelenka, the entire department is quiet and a little shy, eyes flicking to the door nervously whenever it opens. Sure, last week it would have been hysterical for Sheppard to find out, but today, it feels different.

Rod makes six mistakes in his calculations before he gives up and takes his notes with him, because he really does need to ask Zelenka a question about yesterday's simulation and not for any other reason.

They're not in the Chair room, though, and Rod finds himself wandering toward the jumper bay, because Sheppard always has an excuse for supposedly-vital repairs and subsequent "necessary" flight tests. Rod figures that if there was ever a time Sheppard would want to be in the air, it would be today.

Which is why coming on Zelenka pushed up against the front of the jumper with his shirt halfway undone and Sheppard shoving his tongue down his throat is a little bit of a shock.

Meaning a lot, and Rod stumbles, dropping his notes just as Sheppard pulls back, looking annoyed. "Problem, McKay?"

Honestly, Rod really doesn't know. "Aren't you two supposed to be working on something?"

"Jumper's running simulations," Sheppard says, casually stepping back, not bothering to so much as tuck in his shirt. It must be laundry day--Sheppard's in uniform for once, strangely foreign on his body, like it doesn't belong. "We had a few minutes."

Zelenka ducks away, muttering something that's probably insulting in Czech while Sheppard stares at Rod with blank disdain, like he can't imagine anyone having any problem with, say, making out during work time.

"Besides," Sheppard says lightly, grabbing his uniform jacket off the ground. "Breaktime. It's three o'clock."

* * *

Rod had counted on the fact that Sheppard was too painfully abrasive and just plain *bad* with people to keep up this level of amiability for long--even though this level of amiability in Sheppard is the equivalent of a really bad mood with other people. It's disconcerting to see Sheppard interact with other expedition members in ways that don't send them into homicidal rage, and annoying when Sheppard suddenly pops up at social functions--still painfully, horrifically awkward and unable to carry on anything resembling small talk without being insulting, but somehow now also weirdly endearing in his socially backward way.

Then Rod has to wonder what in the name of *God* he's thinking, because is he actually sitting here, sipping a Tom Collins and unhappy that he's not mediating between Sheppard and the world every five seconds?

The break in Atlantis' usual schedule of disasters led Dr. Weir to announce a gathering of all off-duty personnel in the messhall, which was basically an excuse for alcohol and no-foul groping on the balconies. Taking another drink, Rod watches as Teyla tries to teach Sheppard the traditional Athosian harvest dance, grinning suddenly as Sheppard stumbles, guiding his body with her own in the fast, simple steps. A five year old could do it, but Sheppard's treating it like it's a bad game of Twister.

"He's going to injure her if he's not careful," Rod murmurs to Ronon as Teyla ducks one flailing arm, catching Sheppard before he can fall.

"He's not that bad," Ronon says, drinking plain water and looking thoughtful. Rod wonders if Ronon was struck blind at some point tonight. "Reminds me of myself before I joined the military." Ronon chuckles as Teyla manages to get Sheppard through a slow turn. Teyla's startlingly bright tonight, in a way that Rod had only seen her on Athos, in a red dress she only wears during the Athosian festivals, dark hair twisted with golden beads. She's easier with Sheppard than he's ever seen her with anyone, which makes Rod wonder how often they've been working together. Rod hadn't expected her to show up tonight, but Ronon had mentioned it at their training session, that she'd been trying to get John to relax using some of the simpler Athosian dances.

Apparently, it hasn't worked, but Rod's got to give her credit for trying. 

As the music ends, Sheppard smiles suddenly, bright and flushed, sweating a little from the overhead lights, and Rod reflects that Teyla seems a lot less antagonistic toward Sheppard than one might assume from the fact she's taken over his weekly combat lessons. There's a round of amused applause and Sheppard looks surprised before bowing clumsily, letting Teyla lead him back to their table.

Taking a glass of water--because Sheppard doesn't drink (except for the one time that started this entire mess)--Sheppard leans into the table, and Rod takes in the fact that Sheppard's experimenting with dressing like someone who isn't blind. At least for social occasions. Even the normally immaculate dark hair is strangely messy, and Rod can see Colonel Sheppard in the tilt of his head as he takes a drink. Rod looks away before Sheppard catches him.

"You are improving, Dr. Sheppard," Teyla says politely. In actuality, he seems to be getting worse. Rod turns his head to hide his smile.

"Better than with the sticks," Ronon grunts, and Sheppard kicks Ronon's chair with an unfamiliar look on his face that might, on other people, have looked playful. It's almost creepy.

They aren't a *close* team, exactly--not like Lorne's team--but Rod had always appreciated the professionalism of their interactions, even if he'd maybe just a little envied McKay *his* close, friendly team. And envied him his Colonel Sheppard a *lot*. But as Teyla leans over to push John's hair behind one ear and Ronon tries to steal his water, Rod feels a strange sense of disassociation, like he's missing something. 

"I think the differences are interesting," Teyla's saying, leaning both elbows on the table as Sheppard pulls out a chair, sitting straight backed, like he's about to lecture to a class of very bored students. 

Sheppard shrugs. "Teer had some interesting insights on how centering could increase concentration during meditation."

Huh? Rod turns to see Sheppard drawing something in the condensation. "Finding the body, and releasing it," Sheppard says, finishing a line. "Clearing your mind and finding what's outside yourself. They were going about it wrong, but the basic idea was oneness with the universe, not self."

"Interesting," Teyla says. "I had wondered during our meditation exercises where you learned such powers of concentration."

"And Ronon always falls asleep," Sheppard says with a quirk of his lips that could almost pass for friendly. Rod wonders, uncomfortably, when Ronon, of all people, had started meditating. And when Sheppard started sharing his holy alone time with Teyla, of all people. "It's okay. Not everyone is cut out for Ascension. I'll send postcards from the other side."

Ronon rolls his eyes, making Teyla laugh softly. Ronon's head tilts backward, eyes on Teyla's face. "You wanna dance?"

"Your toes up to it?" Rod says lazily, and gets a frown from Teyla for his trouble. Okay, this is getting ridiculous. "I was just--"

"John is improving," Teyla says firmly, and wait. Did she call him *John*? "When I return, I will teach you the summer dances, John."

"You're trying to kill me in a way that can't be traced," Sheppard says contentedly. "I'm smarter than you. I'll get away."

"You may try." With another smile, she leads Ronon out onto the floor, and Sheppard takes a drink of water with a smirk curving up one corner of his mouth. Across the room, Rod can see Lorne watching them with steady, jealous eyes.

Turning to Sheppard, Rod sees he's watching as well. "So you and Lorne--you aren't--"

"It's a casual thing," Sheppard says, and Rod watches him smile, a new one that Rod's never seen before, a slow stretch of lips chased by a glimpse of pink tongue. When the hell did Sheppard start doing that? When did he *learn that*?

Across the room, Lorne fumbles his drink, and Sheppard stretches, all awkward elbows and weirdly cramped movements, yet strangely intriguing all the same. "You know. I'm getting the attraction of this sex thing," Sheppard says thoughtfully, finishing his water. "Want to dance?"

Rod stares at him. "What? No. I like my toes the way they are, thank you."

John's smile fades briefly, making Rod feel like the biggest asshole in the room, before he stands up, putting his empty glass aside, squaring his shoulders in a weirdly vulnerable way before he stalks uncomfortably toward the floor. Lorne catches him well before Zelenka can get untangled from his chair, and Rod watches Lorne's hand rest lightly on one shoulder before drawing Sheppard toward Teyla and Ronon, looping an arm around his neck when they come to a stop. Sheppard doesn't seem to know where to put his hands, but Lorne doesn't seem to mind, and Rod loses track of them when Sheppard steps wrong and sends them on a slow stumble through the crowd.

Finishing his drink, Rod scans his immediate area, sees Miko, and stomps over, pulling her out of her chair. "Let's dance," he says firmly, pulling her behind him, trying to track where he last saw John and Lorne. A tall, dark head comes into view briefly before vanishing, and the Marines break into a disturbing chorus of wolf-whistles. That tells Rod at least they're both still conscious and Sheppard didn't careen them to their deaths off the balcony or something.

Turning, he pulls Miko into his arms, surprised to see her looking up at him with wide-eyed adoration. Huh. From the corner of his eye, he spots Teyla and Ronon move quickly out of the way as Sheppard and Lorne stumble by, then Lorne plants his feet, almost jerking Sheppard off-balance, one hand on the back of his neck, the other riding just below the small of his back, and they go still for a second before Lorne starts to slowly sway. 

That, apparently, Sheppard can do, and they stand there, kind of silly with all the people moving around them, but Rod sees Teyla give them an indulgent smile, Ronon smirk as they go by, and feels something form tight and hot in his chest when Sheppard closes his eyes.

* * *

When Rod wakes up with Miko and a pounding headache sharing his bed, he swears he's never drinking again.

* * *

Sheppard finishes the final simulation on his second generation almost-ZPM less than a week later, leading to the first live testing.

Rod had the engineers loop off the area Sheppard would be connecting to, using an empty ZPM bank that they had located last year, watching in worry as Sheppard and Kavanagh hotwire it into one of the empty slots, yelling at each other the entire time regarding ancestry, school of choice, likelihood of having blown the entire committee before their respective doctoral defenses, and sexual preferences in regards to certain Atlantean wildlife. Sheppard's so pale that he's nearly transparent, uniform pants slightly looser than Rod remembers them being, and Rod takes a moment to wonder if Sheppard's slept since he started the last simulation.

"All right," Sheppard breathes, going to his laptop, hazel eyes fixed on the power outputs with an expression that's more open than Rod's ever seen it. "Get back. Starting power cycle--now."

It's slow, a quiet throb that Rod can somehow feel in the tendons in his calves as Atlantis stretches, the dead part of the city thrumming slowly to life. It's like the first time they walked into the gateroom, panels coming alive around them as the almost-ZPM wakes up with a shiver, glowing golden as the room wakes up.

Sheppard goes still and silent, hazel eyes incandescent green, and Rod finds himself watching Sheppard more than the room.

He did it, Rod thinks, a sense of awe filling him, reflected on the disbelieving faces of everyone in the room; Zelenka, shocked and still; Kavanagh, pale and silent; Dr. Weir, staring at the almost-ZPM like she'd never seen anything like it.

They haven't, Rod thinks. This is the first fully functional not-quite-ZPM built by non-Ancients in over ten thousand years.

"It's not right yet," Sheppard whispers, biting his lip as he studies the power outputs.

"It's perfect, Dr. Sheppard," Dr. Weir says firmly, shaking herself from her daze and crossing the room to squeeze his arm. Sheppard's head jerks up in surprise, something vulnerable and very young flashing across his face as she turns her head away. "Forty-eight hours downtime. If anyone sees you in the lab, you'll be spending your vacation on Athos. Understood?"

Sheppard snaps a sloppy salute that he had to have learned from Lorne. "Yes, ma'am."

Dr. Weir grins. "Go. I think we'll survive without you for a few days."

"Honestly, I doubt it," Sheppard answers, rolling his eyes, but Kavanagh's murmuring something to him and Sheppard smirks. "But I'll let you try. See you later."

Rod pushes his laptop at Zelenka, wondering if his hands are the reason the laptop is shaking. "Be back. Need coffee." Turning, he follows Sheppard down the hall, unsurprised to see him slow, stopping to lean briefly into the wall. "Sheppard?"

"Just tired." And he probably is. Rod pauses in surprise to see the dark circles beneath Sheppard's eyes, the tell-tale shake in normally rock-steady hands.

"You look high," Rod says flatly.

Sheppard quirks an eyebrow. "Just a lot of very high quality coffee. Gift from the Marines." Turning, he braces his back against the wall, eyes closing briefly. "Fuck, I'm tired."

"Go to your quarters. That's an order, Dr. Sheppard." 

Sheppard's head lifts briefly, back going straight and narrow, but he's way too exhausted to fight, coming off adrenaline and whatever the hell was in that coffee. Taking Sheppard by the elbow, Rod leads him down the hall, surprised to feel bones so close beneath thin skin.

It's familiar, Sheppard working himself into near-collapse, and Rod being there to catch him. Rod finds himself repeating the same things he always does as Sheppard goes monosyllabic and suggests the anatomically impossible in return. It's a routine as old as their association. Rod almost grins when Sheppard trips into a wall, knocking his chin against the smooth metal, and that's when his language turns Ancient and downright filthy. 

"Quiet," Rod says affectionately as he herds Sheppard into a transporter, pushing the button for the residential wing. Sheppard leans back, head tilted, eyes closed. 

"It wasn't right," he murmurs, eyes flickering open. "I didn't--"

"No one's done anything even close," Rod says, voice sharper than he meant it to be. Head of science and gate team leader, on the senior staff and working with the Athosians, doesn't leave him as much lab time as he'd once had. Not for something that needs the kind of single-minded dedication this project required. "No one."

Sheppard's eyes slit shut. "But it's still not right." 

When the door opens, Rod's more careful, blocking Sheppard from running into a wall in a fit of disorientation, and looks up just in time to see Lorne, obviously fresh from a shower, boots still unlaced, coming down the hall from the military quarter at a slow jog, hand dropping from his radio. Rod wonders who called him and how he can turn their lives into a living hell the fastest. 

Catching sight of them, Lorne grins. "Hey, Rod, what--wow, Shep."

Lorne speeds up, coming up in front of them, frowning as he brushes his thumb gently across Sheppard's bruising chin, peering into half-closed eyes in worry. "Shep, you okay?"

Shep?

"Fine," Sheppard says irritably, trying to push him off, but obviously, Lorne's been dealing with an overtired Sheppard more regularly than Rod had guessed. Efficiently, he slides an arm under Sheppard's, taking his weight from Rod. "I'm *fine*, Jesus, what is this, Neanderthals try to think like people day?"

"No, it's good little scientists go to bed day," Lorne answers breezily as Sheppard stumbles, leaning into him in a way that Rod's never seen Sheppard voluntarily touch anyone. "Come on."

"I'm *fine*." But Rod notices how Sheppard's hand closes over Lorne's shoulder, accepting the support with his body even if his face shows nothing but irritation. "I'm off--"

"For forty-eight hours, and coincidence, so am I." Lorne grins as Sheppard lists against him briefly before attempting to straighten. "Thanks, Rod. I'll take it from here."

Rod can feel the side of his body cooling from where Sheppard leaned against him as Lorne leads Sheppard down the hall toward his quarters, voice low and close to Sheppard's ear. 

Rod's watching when Lorne opens his door and pushes Sheppard gently inside, still watching when the door closes, leaving him alone in the quiet hall.

* * *

Two days later, Sheppard announces his presence in the labs by tripping over a trash can, nearly taking out Miko's stool, and practically glowing with well-rested- and well-laid-ness, lazy energy pouring off him in near-palpable waves. He's insulting and rude and completely oblivious to everyone around him, melting onto a stool while half the lab looks on with indulgent amusement, because it's pretty obvious how Sheppard spent his two days off. Simpson brings him coffee and mocks his hair before going with him to do checks on the almost-ZPM while Zelenka looks on with narrowed eyes. Rod really wishes Zelenka would go back to his pointless crush on Dr. Weir already.

They're assigned two missions over the next week, both of which go so swimmingly that Rod's actively disturbed, especially when Sheppard turns down a perfect opportunity to alienate the natives, instead wandering off with rolled eyes and a disgusted curve of his lip to get Ronon to follow him around the temple while he takes readings.

He also has a new gun, but Rod doesn't even bother asking where he got that or who acquired it for him. It's not like Lorne isn't casually waiting in the gate room doing something pointless with the Marines when they get back. Sheppard looks up, mouth twisting in amusement, and Rod tries to remember the times when they'd come back and Sheppard would storm directly to his lab without a glance.

It's weird.

"Have you noticed anything different?" Dr. Weir asks at the end of a staff meeting while Rod plays Tetris on his laptop, angled so no one can see. Lorne, looking loose and relaxed in the chair opposite, shrugs, while Sumner, Zelenka, and Teyla look blank. Yes, Rod thinks viciously, he has noticed something different, that being Atlantis has become strange and weird and *wrong*. It can't be just the excess power. Checking his schedule, Rod notices that he has a meeting on Athos with the council and really wishes he were just a little less irreplaceable.

After that, it's a late dinner with Miko, because somehow, and Rod has no idea how, he's fallen into a relationship.

"Rod," Dr. Weir says, and Rod tears his eyes from the screen to see Dr. Weir watching him with a smile on her face. "You and Teyla have a meeting tonight on Athos. I'm sending Dr. Sheppard along with you. He's asked for more logged flight time--" And Rod knows exactly who to blame for Sheppard taking important research time to *fly* of all things, "--and considering" she trails off, because considering means, since he built a not-quite ZPM, let him have his fun. Great. That's just *great*.

"Right," Rod says shortly, snapping his laptop closed and getting raised eyebrows for his trouble. God, Sheppard's rubbing off on him; that's the only explanation. "Yes. I'm sorry, of course. I'd better get back to the lab and finish up then. You'll have my report tonight."

"Tomorrow's fine," Dr. Weir says, resting her chin on her hand. "Dismissed."

Gathering up his things, Rod wonders if it's the fact he only had one cup of coffee today that's affecting his mood so badly. Coming out in the gateroom, he sees Zelenka wander toward Dr. Weir's office with a besotted look, so there's something going right. 

When Rod gets to the main lab, Sheppard's stretched out on the floor with three laptops, Kavanagh, and what looks like an entire box of Ancient tinker toys. "Okay, this is cool," Sheppard says, and Rod watches as Sheppard types frantically into one of the laptops and the tinker toys--long relegated to a box in the back of the lab--float up into the air to reassemble as a molecule of glucose. "Ancient kindergarten."

"That's ridiculous," Kavanagh says typing into the second computer. "They used it to get three dimensional visualizations of unstable elements."

Sheppard makes a derisive sound. "Hello, Mr. My Actual Degree is in *Sanskrit*, they have holoprojectors for that." Sheppard types again, and Rod watches naquada reform in front of his eyes. "It's for kids. Spatial training, keyboard familiarity, and the building blocks of physics."

"You," Kavanagh says stiffly, apparently trying to take control back. Good luck with that; Atlantis' computers think Sheppard is the best thing since Ancient sliced bread, "You must have been a very strange kid."

Rod catches himself from slamming down the laptop, but only barely. "Does this have any practical use, or are you two indulging in nostalgia for your long gone and probably reprobate childhoods?"

Sheppard's head comes up sharply, eyes narrowing at the tone of Rod's voice. "I thought you might need the refresher." Sheppard types something quickly, and Rod watches a molecule of water's chemical structure form before his eyes. "This is *water*. Remember? Or do I need to take it down a notch? Let's start with hydrogen."

It's not the worst Sheppard's ever been--in fact, compared to the days before he was getting laid regularly by a member of the armed forces, it's practically *pleasant*--but Rod finds himself suddenly and senselessly angry. "We're not here to watch you play with toys, Dr. Sheppard," Rod says, keeping his voice pleasant with a physical effort. "Or you, Dr. Kavanagh."

Kavanagh rolls his eyes but complies. Sheppard, long time veteran of overseeing desalinization tank cleaning, waste water disposal, and redesigning the solid waste receptacles from scratch for a variety of lab-related misdemeanors over the last three years, leans back on one arm, hazel eyes narrowed and sharp. "Are you going to try and stop me?"

Rod opens his mouth to cheerfully exile his least favorite person to the sewers--and this time, a fucking *month* down there, let him try to carry on a relationship after twelve hour days in solid waste--when Sheppard's radio goes off. Standing up in jerky movements, Sheppard touches the radio. "Jesus, *what*?" 

Rod turns on Kavanagh as he scrambles to his feet, already moving the laptops back to their original spots while the other scientists look very busy doing other very important things. Turning back, he catches Miko staring across the room, a concerned look on her face, turning just in time to see Sheppard's hand drop from his radio, looking confused.

"Sheppard? If you're done?"

"Yeah." Frowning, Sheppard crouches to pick up the last laptop, then pauses, shaking his head, before getting slowly to his feet. Setting it aside, he turns toward the lab doors and walks by Rod and out without another word.

Rod stares at the door in shock. "Zelenka, you're in charge while I check on Sheppard," he says absently, going out in time to see Sheppard stepping into a transporter.

"Sheppard!" he yells, but the doors close without pause, and Rod skids to a stop, waiting until the doors opens again before going inside and checking where he went. 

Programming the same coordinates, he waits impatiently for the doors to close, coming out just in time to see Sheppard pausing at the door of the infirmary.

Rod pauses, watching Sheppard staring inside, then touches his radio. "Dr. Weir? What did you tell Dr. Sheppard?"

There's a pause from the other side. "Major Lorne's team came in hot," she says slowly. "Lorne was injured as the wormhole closed--"

Shit. Right. Flicking off the radio, Rod starts toward Sheppard, watching carefully as Sheppard simply stands there. Closer, Rod can see the blank look on his face, the one Rod's grown to associate the times Sheppard's confronted with a social situation that he can't decide how to approach. "Dr. Sheppard," Rod says softly as he comes closer, but Sheppard doesn't even twitch. "Sheppard."

Sheppard's head snaps around, and the flat look in the green eyes makes Rod back off a step. "Why did she call me?"

Rod used to wonder what had gotten Sheppard to this point of utter disassociation from his species, but under the wear and pressure of actually dealing with him, it had become more of an intellectual exercise and source of humor. A kid raised by wolves would be more aware of his connection with the human race, he remembers saying once, and it makes him stop now, feeling vaguely sick. 

Sheppard's still waiting for the answer, an answer obvious to everyone else, anyone else. "He's your--" Rod trails off; somehow, he can't make himself say it. "He's your friend. She thought you needed to know."

"About something I can do nothing about?" Sheppard's eyes flicker to the door. "Stand around waiting to see if he--" Sheppard stutters to a stop, eyes going very dark. Rod remembers sitting outside the infirmary with Ronon and Teyla when Sheppard had transformed into an Iratus bug, the long hours of waiting for him to die, feeling his team's quiet support, but it's nothing like this second, bright and crystal clear and painful.

"You've waited for us before," Rod says slowly. "Come on." Wrapping his fingers around Sheppard's arm, Rod leads him into the infirmary, where Carson is just emerging from a curtained bed. His tired face lightens as he sees them, coming up to Sheppard to lay a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"He's fine, Doctor Sheppard," Carson says. "A few fractures, some burns, that's all. He's sleeping now."

"Okay," Sheppard says blankly. Rod waves Carson off, leading Sheppard around the curtain, where two of Lorne's team are already assembled, looking more relieved than grave. One of the Marines almost immediately gets to his feet, but Sheppard's staring at the bed with an expression that Rod can't read. 

Rod frowns, looking for the third team member. "Where's--"

There's a quick shake of head from Carson, having come in beside him, and Rod swallows as one of the Marines guides John gently to a chair before he tries to go and ends up impaling himself on something. A nurse brings another chair, and the three men sit in silent companionship, eyes fixed on the bed where Lorne lies, too pale and too quiet, surrounded by humming machines.

Rod feels Carson pull, resenting it for an eternal minute, but the grip is unmistakable, and the truth is, this isn't his place to be. Reluctantly, he allows Carson to lead him out, following him into the small, quiet office. "How?" Rod says slowly. "Why wasn't I called?"

"I was sending someone for you, since you left your radio off in the lab," Carson says dryly, then pauses. "Dr. Ferria was dead on arrival."

Rod fights the urge to break something. Dropping into a chair, he stares at the back wall. "What happened?"

"Shot," Carson says shortly, looking faintly sick. Shaking himself, he reaches for his laptop, then stops, sighing. "Lorne will be out of commission for a bit."

"But he'll be okay?" Rod flashes on Sheppard's blank face and finds himself wondering what Sheppard would have done if Lorne hadn't made it back.

"Right as rain in a few weeks."

Rod slumps in his chair, then turns as Dr. Weir and Colonel Sumner come in, looking this way and that until they spot Carson. "Through there," Carson says, pointing. "He's sleeping."

Nodding in relief, both approach the bed, and Rod pushes himself to his feet. He'll have to tell his scientists about Dr. Ferria, do the paperwork, write the letter, clean out her room--suddenly, the list seems enormous, and Rod rubs a hand absently against his forehead, feeling the beginning of a tension headache start right behind his eyes. "I'm going back to the lab," he says, ignoring Carson's concerned frown. "Call me if anything--anything happens."

* * *

Rod stumbles out of the lab after midnight, ignoring a call from Miko, who's probably expecting him to be a good boyfriend and show up to grovel, but even on his best days, he sucks at that. Turning off his radio, he makes his slow way to the residential wing, detouring when he comes out of the transporter into a sharp left, thinking tiredly of Dr. Ferria.

Her body will be returned on the *Daedalus*, along with Rod's letter that says stupid, innocuous, untrue things about how she died and how she contributed nothing at all, her pile of papers classified until probably long after they've all died in this godforsaken galaxy. Coming to her door, he touches the crystals, and is welcomed into a room warm with light and the sight of John Sheppard kneeling on the floor, packing a box.

Flat eyes flicker up, see Rod, then dismiss him all at once. "I'm taking care of it," Sheppard says without inflection, setting another stack of neatly folded clothing gently into the box with hands so steady he could be doing brain surgery. Backing off, Sheppard glances around the room, and Rod does too, noting how the walls are stripped bare, the sheets removed from the bed, the dresser drawers opened.

Sheppard's been down here for hours. 

"What are you doing?" Rod says slowly, trying to pull this very un-Sheppard behavior into some kind of context, too tired to try and interpret around a blank face and unyielding body.

Sheppard's hand clench on the edges of the box. "You can't possibly be that stupid, even if your Mensa score was lower than mine."

"It was not--!" Rod stops short, watching as Sheppard picks up another stack of clothing, placing it in the box before pulling the flaps over it, picking up tape from beside him, and cutting it with a lab box cutter. "Sheppard."

"There wasn't--she didn't have a lot of friends," Sheppard says steadily as he tapes the box lids flaps together. "And by not a lot, I mean, no one but her team. Ask me how I know."

Rod sits down a few careful feet away as Sheppard cuts another piece of tape. "How do you know?"

"Like knows like." Sheppard stretches the second piece of tape across the box, sitting back on his heels, mouth tight. "People like me and Ferria weren't popular with the SGC. They jumped at the chance to send us out here. No outside ties and a deep desire to get us as far away as possible."

Rod swallows. "I chose you for what you could do," he says, feeling like he's suddenly walking on broken glass.

"You got me because they wanted me in a different galaxy so badly they could taste it," Sheppard says, but the low voice lacks bitterness. "I never cared. This is what I wanted to do. This is--this is everything. Do you think I ever cared what anyone thought of me when I could have this? This city?"

Rod wonders what it is Sheppard's looking for. "You need to get some sleep," Rod says finally. He can't deal with this. He's not even sure what he's dealing with. "I'll finish--"

"No," Sheppard says, getting up to pull out another box, methodically packing the few books on the desk. "I'll do it."

"You don't have to."

"Her team can't," Sheppard says steadily. "I--they're still being treated and they need--we need to do this." Sheppard strips the desk of the last of its ornaments, movements more sloppy, and Rod unsteadily finds his feet. He should go to bed, let Sheppard work out--whatever he needs to work out. 

He should do a lot of things. "Go to bed," Rod says, summoning every bit of authority he can muster. Sheppard ignores him, dumping the contents of a desk drawer into the box, spilling pencils and jump drives on the floor. "John. *Sheppard*."

"Rod," Sheppard mocks, still emptying drawers with that terrifying focus. "Rod-ney. Mer-e-dith. McKay. Rod. Jesus. It's the stupidest nickname--seriously, do you like advertising your penis issues every time someone says your name?"

Rod opens his mouth, but Sheppard's on a roll. "God, I hate people." Sheppard drops the drawer on the desk. "They're stupid. They slow down my work. They make things complicated when they don't need to be."

"Sheppard," Rod tries again, watching Sheppard's hands begin to shake. Too much coffee, not enough sleep, and now this. "Come on." Reaching out, Rod pries away a pencil clenched in one shaking hand.

"I've seen you all in the infirmary," Sheppard breathes, eyes wide, and now Rod can read them, can see the cracks in all those places that make Sheppard who he is. "I've woken up there. It wasn't like this." Jerking away, Sheppard dumps a day planner messily into the box, papers floating out like small, solid clouds before settling on the floor. 

"I didn't want this. This." Sheppard makes a vague gesture that indicates the room, or maybe the Pegasus galaxy. "I *liked* my life before. I liked it, do you get that? At first this--this was just to piss you off. You come back talking about how great the other Atlantis was and then you fuck my doppelganger when he comes here. Did you think that would be *okay*? Then you fuck me and you might as well have done a comparison chart right there and then, because whatever the hell you were doing in that bed, it wasn't with me.

"So it was funny to see you freak out. Now--now I get *this*. And it's not fucking worth it."

Rod watches Sheppard turn away, dropping on the bed like a broken doll, wide-eyed and angry--the real kind, the kind Rod's never seen in him before, because nothing had ever come close enough for him to care. Hands clenched, Sheppard stares at the wall like he can break it with the power of his mind.

And if anyone could, Rod thinks, it would be Sheppard.

"It wasn't like that," Rod says slowly, but he can't be sure it wasn't.

"I never liked you," Sheppard says slowly. "It's all so easy for you. People. Getting along. It's so easy that you don't even value it. Like it's *cheap*." Sheppard's knuckles go yellow-white as he draws in an unsteady breath. "I talked to Dr. Weir. I asked for a transfer off your team."

Rod feels it again, that tightness in his chest that makes it hard to breathe. "No."

"Lorne's team needs a scientist."

"Your relationship with him makes it a conflict of interest."

Sheppard lifts his head, staring at Rod with bright green eyes. "It was a bigger conflict with you the last few years. If I could keep my perspective then, I can now." Sheppard stands up abruptly. "I'll finish up in the morning." Sheppard walks by him like he's not even there, and Rod's left staring at the last half-filled box, the mess of papers and pens on the floor, and leans into the wall, shutting his eyes.

* * *

Everyone gives Sheppard a wide, sympathetic berth while he regresses to a point that makes the horror of his last three years look like a walk in the park. Rod finds himself mediating screaming matches three times a day in the lab while Sheppard tries to fit back into a skin he's already outgrown, that they've all outgrown too much to ever turn back. 

It's three days before Sheppard cracks and says thank you for the coffee that Miko gives him, then looks so disgusted with himself that Rod has to fight not to laugh. After that, Sheppard gives up on the tantrums and acts like an adult, albeit one with the emotional maturity of a fifteen year old girl and a sudden, painful masochistic streak.

Sheppard insists on field training three days a week, and it'd be sad and funny if it wasn't so scary. Sheppard simply doesn't *have* the instincts or the coordination, and thrice-weekly visits to the infirmary for bloodied noses, dislocated fingers, or truly spectacular bruise sets have to be getting old, but Sheppard just takes it without a sound.

The fourth time, Teyla calls Rod at near midnight to come fetch their soon-to-be-former teammate from the shooting range, the one place, the only place, where Sheppard has few peers, and Rod finds himself leading a silent, blank-faced Sheppard back to bed at one in the morning because somewhere along the line, Sheppard forgot the meaning of limits. Dropping him unceremoniously into bed, Rod surveys the painfully tidy room, with the neat, bare walls, the carefully scrubbed floor, geometric shapes of rugs fastened flat so Sheppard can't trip over them in the dark on the way to the bathroom. As Sheppard collapses into an exhausted ball, Rod runs a finger across the spine of *War and Peace* and thinks about a scientist trying to become a soldier.

"Stop going through my things."

Rod rolls his eyes. "I'm looking at your books, not your underwear drawer."

Sheppard snuffles sleepily into his pillow. "Books tell you more than boxers versus briefs ever will."

* * *

The next morning, Sheppard's quiet and distracted, and Rod catches him watching the lab door.

"Oh," Simpson says, and Rod turns to see Lorne hovering at the door, up on crutches, looking a hell of a lot better than the last time Rod saw him. Swallowing, Rod's glance flickers to Sheppard, who in a stunning act of bizarre behavior is already shutting down his work.

Rod doesn't bother reminding him it's barely three; he prefers to save his battles for times he might have a fighting chance of winning. 

Looping his bag over his shoulder, Sheppard follows Lorne out of the lab, muttering something about permanent damage and the hell if he's going to carry Lorne around the city while watching Lorne limp with sharp, worried eyes.

There's a memo on Rod's computer reminding him he needs to choose a new team member, another from Teyla with a short, unhappy list of unpalatable possibilities, and a single line from Ronon to say he's tired of getting email and just talk Sheppard into coming back already.

It's not like Rod didn't try that. 

Zelenka, staring at his laptop with the fixed expression of a man who isn't even in the room, but lost in sick fantasies that probably involve Dr. Weir and borscht or something, shifts beside him. "Talk to him," he says, like he's actually paying attention to the world around him. Rod frowns, but Zelenka's still staring at his screen where, Rod realizes when he cranes his neck, the man is playing Civilization IV. "You are quiet this morning. Normally this would be welcome, as your good moods are often oppressive, but not when you look so unhappy."

Rod glares at Zelenka, but apparently, his authority in his own lab is officially gone for good. Feeling vaguely nauseated, Rod pushes back, trying to figure out when his life became this. He has a girlfriend he's actively hiding from if sex is not involved, two team members making it clear his only purpose right now is to lure the expatriate back in the fold and away from his boyfriend, and an almost--former team member who seems to be going through some kind of deep personality renaissance that's making it impossible to figure out what on earth the problem *is*.

It's like a soap opera. A very bad one, with subtitles. Written by people who do not speak English as a first language.

"I'm fine," Rod says resentfully. "I'm getting coffee."

"Have fun. Tell Sheppard we say hi."

* * *

Rod's not sure how he ends up involved in one of Teyla's lessons to Sheppard, though Ronon's reasons were plausible at the time. "You might consider training with her," Ronon says as they sit down on a bench while Sheppard finishes up the mandatory stretching that Ronon also requires before every lesson.

"I think our lessons are enough," Rod says warily, trying to make himself comfortable on the hard bench.

"Hmm," Teyla says thoughtfully as Sheppard stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. He looks almost painfully stiff as she circles him, correcting his posture back to something resembling correct for stick fighting. Rod watches Sheppard try to follow her and stumbling. "No, you are overthinking it. Your body knows what it is supposed to do. Let it."

Rod feels weirdly distant from them as Teyla and Sheppard move together, Ronon watching intently, as involved in the lesson as they are.

The first turn of the exercise has Sheppard lurching gawkily, one bare foot catching Teyla's knee and almost sending her down to the floor. Balancing herself, she grabs Sheppard by the waist, hauling him back up, moving his body patiently until he's once again in the first position.

"It doesn't work," Sheppard says irritably through clenched teeth. "Trust me, gym teachers have tried. And failed." Both hands are clenched tightly around the sticks, and from here, Rod can see the tight-knuckled grip wrapped around the wood.

"Then they taught you *wrong*," Teyla says firmly. "You move as if you have a stick sewn into the back of your shirt, into--" She trails off, looking thoughtful as she circles Sheppard again, eyes widening. "Ronon, give me three candles and bring them here. Dr. McKay, please lower the lights--no, not you, John," she says sharply. Sheppard frowns. "You, close your eyes and think of your body. Think of floating in a quiet pool. And do not *move*."

Ronon agreeably unfastens Teyla's bag, finding three candles and bringing them to her, along with the small, wax-stained rug that protects the floor. Setting them in a neat line, she lights each one with the lighter that Ronon produces from his pants, then glances at Rod. "Lights please."

Rod obligingly lowers them as Ronon sits back beside him, elbows pressed to his knees, eyes fixed on Sheppard with a curious intensity that makes Rod wonder if he knows where this is going, since Rod has no idea.

"John, open your eyes."

With only the light of the candles and the emergency lighting around the edges of the room, it's hard to see Teyla and Sheppard as anything but faint, dark shapes.

"When you meditate, you dismiss the world around you to search inside yourself, before you reach outward, finding oneness," Teyla says in a low, hypnotic voice. Even Rod feels more relaxed listening to it. "Your talent has always been in creating a world within your mind to reach out of. I want you to do this. Imagine your body as an extension of the sticks. You know how they should move; you have watched. Now follow them. First position."

Sheppard brings them up, more slowly than he had tried before, almost smooth, and his feet don't get caught in each other when they shift. Teyla corrects his posture with light touches, then steps back. "John?"

"Hmm?" His voice is already lower, and Rod notices that his grip on the sticks is no longer quite so tight.

"One repetition of the exercise slowly, then stop." Teyla wisely steps back as the stick swings out, and Rod finds himself watching Sheppard's body go through each move. he has none of Teyla's easy grace and familiarity, but the stretch of his body is smoother than Rod's ever seen him move, almost comfortable inside his skin, and Rod can hear Teyla murmuring--instructions or encouragement, he's not sure which one--before Sheppard comes back to his original spot. "Again, half-speed."

It's even better this time, like Sheppard's losing his grip on that stick shoved up his ass, spine bending like warming wax, a few breaks in form to Rod's inexperienced eye, but *better*. When he stops again, even Rod can see Sheppard's lost somewhere that has nothing to do with this room or the body that betrays him at every turn. Teyla's voice, dark and hypnotically low, ripples through the room. "Full speed, John."

Ronon straightens as Sheppard curves into the first turn--hit as Teyla brings up her sticks in the simple children's exercise--but Sheppard keeps going as if he didn't hear it, and Teyla retreats, following the pattern--hit, with Teyla already waiting for it--a third, and then they're back in the original position and Teyla kneels to put down her sticks, reaching out, hands resting on Sheppard's shoulders.

Rod can see the glaze in the hazel eyes before Sheppard surfaces, almost overbalancing before he catches himself, dropping his sticks to brace his hands on Teyla's shoulders. Their foreheads touch lightly as Teyla leans forward, and Rod sees her smile.

"It was perfect," she says softly.

The glaze clears completely as he pulls away, looking at Teyla in open surprise. "This is what you must learn to do. In this place, between us. Your body knows what it must do, John. Set it free."

* * *

Sheppard makes up for three minutes of perfect coordination by knocking into Kavanagh's latest experiment and blowing a hole in the wall. Sheppard laughs when he helps sweep up the broken glass, weirdly braying and almost mind-bogglingly annoying, but Rod realizes he's never heard Sheppard laugh before.

It's a strange thought, and as Sheppard and Miko go to work on projections across the room while Kavanagh mutters imprecations into his lab table, he thinks he might want to hear it again someday.

* * *

If there's one thing that Rod always recognizes, it's the smell of fresh blood. 

Ronon's asleep, finally, and Carson calls them in for a five minute viewing. Sheppard, still filthy and pushing away every nurse who tries to check his grazed shoulder and cut cheek, is moving past the curtain before Rod can really focus on Carson's words. Their missions are almost never like this. Lorne's First Contact missions, sure, but Rod's team focuses on exploration and science, and with a very few, spectacular exceptions, this simply does not *happen*.

It's not the way it was with Lorne, and Rod can't figure out whether that is a blessing or not. Sheppard's numb shock is worn away so quickly it's like watching a different person: less clumsy, less uncertain, less hostile, checking Ronon over with the experience of someone who spent his evenings in the infirmary daily for a couple of weeks. Teyla, bruised and fragile, comes up beside Sheppard, watching Ronon's face with wide, dark eyes, and Rod watches in surprise as Sheppard reaches for her absently, fingers winding through hers before Carson shoos them out.

A nurse sees to Sheppard's graze while he sits on one of the medical beds in stoic, chilled silence, Teyla beside him. Rod finds himself nostalgic for the guy who dramatized a stubbed toe or a hangnail. Teyla keeps near Sheppard the entire time, and Rod has a sudden, visceral memory of coming into the newly uncamera'ed practice room to find Sheppard and Teyla (fully dressed, sadly enough), sitting together with only a candle between them, lost in quiet in a way that Rod found himself envying before he quickly left again. 

When they've finished, and Teyla's politely rejected her painkillers, Rod watches the two of them curl up in nearby seats, acquiring a blanket from a passing nurse, both sets of dark eyes fixing on the curtained bed where Ronon slept. 

"Rod," Carson says quietly, and Rod lets Carson see to his hand, clucking softly over the few scratches decorating the palm before carefully cleaning. "How is he?"

Rod glances over to see Teyla's subtly shifted Sheppard until he's stretched out over two chairs, head resting in her lap, eyes slitted half-open and unseeing. Rod can hear the low cadence of Teyla's voice. "How do you think?" Rod controls the urge to snarl, but Carson gives him an odd look anyway, putting a light bandage over the minor cuts. Pulling away, Rod feels shy as he watches Teyla stroking back Sheppard's hair. She looks up when he shifts, though, nodding, and Rod comes over.

Crouching, he looks into glazed hazel eyes and wonders what on earth he could possibly say to this. "Sheppard?" Rod controls the urge to touch, brush his fingers over the butterfly-bandaged cut on one high cheekbone, the bruise at the corner of his mouth, the wounded shoulder. There's someone else's blood on his hands and his BDUs. Nothing in his body welcomes any touch but Teyla's. "Sheppard. You're okay?"

Something flickers behind Sheppard's eyes. "No."

Rod gives up, lowering himself down on the floor, closing his eyes briefly at the wave of tiredness, post-adrenal letdown from watching his team almost die and Sheppard forced to take a life. Lives. "I didn't want this," Rod hears Sheppard say softly, Teyla's soothing voice chasing after, words indistinguishable. "I never wanted this."

Rod closes his eyes for a second, remembering the first time he met Sheppard--*It's so easy that you don't even value it.*--talking him into joining, forming the team he knew only in the most superficial sense, and now Sheppard's killed someone, someones, several someones, and nothing will ever be quite the same.

Something brushes the back of his head, and Rod turns just enough to see Sheppard looking down at him. "Yet," he says as Rod blinks. "I'm not okay *yet*. I'll--I will be." A bandaged hand pulls until he leans back, slumping against the chair, head against Sheppard's hip as he shuts his eyes and pretends he can't still smell blood.

* * *

Carson throws them out a few hours later, and Rod stumbles into his room feeling vaguely drunk. Something about adrenaline crashing, maybe, and too much terrible infirmary coffee. The lights come on a little too bright and a little too fast, and he knocks into his desk trying to unfasten his jacket.

He feels--different. The room smells of clean air filters and salt from the ocean, but the bedspread is rough beneath his sensitized fingers, and even the walls, hung with his degrees and commendations and his *cat*, seem wrong, unreal, meant for someone else.

All he can see is John, pale and still and quiet, standing between Rod and three men with guns, the three neat, perfect shots that he thinks he'll hear until the day he dies.

The door doesn't chime, but that's not a surprise, even when Rod turns around to see Sheppard, still dressed in bloody BDUs, pale and looking like Rod feels. The door slides closed quietly behind him, and Rod lists against the edge of his bed before dropping uncomfortably onto the edge, wondering blankly what Sheppard could possibly want to tell him.

Tell him, This isn't what I signed up for. Wearing a gun, shooting an enemy, watching a lover and then a friend almost die. He might say, I hate you. I wish you'd never asked me, looked at me, hired me. He might say anything at all.

Sheppard drops his jacket on the floor and says, "Don't say anything."

And like that, long, lean thighs are on either side of his hips, and he's pressed into the thin Atlantean mattress with Sheppard's mouth hard on his. Something flickers on in his head that he's felt more times than he could count, hot and tight and startling and painful. Sheppard--

*John*.

John's too rough on chapped lips, clumsy like he wasn't on that planet today, something hurtful beneath that pushes to the surface with every scrape of teeth. Rod goes still, letting John take whatever he needs as he skims his hands up John's back. John pulls back, eyes wide and naked.

This is a bad, bad, dear God, *apocalyptically* bad idea. "I didn't say anything."

John's mouth quirks in nothing like a smile. "I'm surprised." 

When they kiss this time, it's softer. Rod cups John's face with infinite gentleness, feeling John relax even more. Rod flinches from indistinct memories of the first time he'd fucked John. He thinks he should remember this, the curve of John's shoulder, the bony length of his spine, the sharp edges of John's hips pressing against his own. He *should* remember the taste of his skin, the soft sounds he makes. He should remember because he was the first to take this man to bed, and it should have meant something: something to him, something more than finally touching, taking something he was told he couldn't have.

He should remember, but he doesn't; it's all brand new. John goes still when Rod runs his nails down his back, melts with lips against his ear, shivers when Rod kisses him, opening him with slow licks, taking in the sharp edges of adrenaline and exhaustion and grief.

Rod builds new memories with his hands and his mouth. He touches the smooth, fine-grained skin of John's back, his arms, the changes in musculature from only a few short months of getting the shit beat out of him by Teyla and Ronon, cording and flexing beneath his touch. He learns how John breathes when Rod's fingers brush his nipples, run through the soft hair on his chest. John groans for lips against his throat, his shoulder, clutches when Rod drags his teeth over the thin skin over his collarbone, buries his sounds in Rod's flesh when Rod runs a palm over his ass, feeling every shiver. John's hands never stop moving, pushing up beneath his shirt, palms skimming his sides and his back, resting over his heart where a gun had pointed for an eternal second that Rod had thought would be his last.

John pulls away suddenly, and Rod's grasping at air, opening his eyes as John sits back on Rod's thighs, reaching down to pull away the blood stained shirt, revealing pale skin, dark hair, and the fresh white bandage on one shoulder. Too-thin and pale and *wired*, on the edge of a post-adrenaline crash, he watches Rod with unreadable eyes and lazily unfastens the top of his pants, drawing down the zipper before bracing himself on one hand and reaching, two fingers sliding just inside the waistband of Rod's pants with a tilted head the only question he's going to ask.

"Yeah," Rod says breathlessly. John's kissing him when his hand pushes into Rod's boxers, running the tips of his fingers over his cock, kissing him when he pulls them down, kissing him when he shifts his hips and wraps a hand around their cocks. Rod cups his face, thumb pressed to the bandage on one cheek, thrusting up into John's hand, against his cock, until he has to pull away to breathe and hates every second that he needs to.

John's good at this, knows where to touch, where to scrape, how to catch Rod's moans in his mouth with a thrust of his tongue. Rod fights back the wave of jealousy. Lorne had taught him this, how to touch and taste and take, and he hates Lorne so much he can barely stand it. "John."

John dips his head, licking a slow stripe up his neck. "Don't talk," John breathes over the wet skin, and Rod's honestly fine with that as long as John's hand *keeps moving*, tight and pulling pleasure through him as slow and warm as fresh taffy. "Unless. You tell me something real."

Rod's breath catches tight in the back of his throat, the words spilling out so suddenly that he's as surprised as John by the words that tumble from his mouth. "I think I'm in love with you."

He doesn't have time to understand anything he sees--a flash of hazel eyes, wide and dark, a twist of that soft, swollen mouth--because John's kissing him again, hand faster and harder and dragging out his orgasm so quickly Rod barely realizes he's coming before slick heat coats his belly. John shudders hard, once, coming against Rod's stomach with a low groan that Rod can feel all the way to his spine.

Rod falls asleep--he must have, must have--because when he wakes up, John's gone, morning light is trickling through the windows, and he can barely taste John in his mouth.

* * *

While Ronon's out of commission with a broken femur, the team is restricted to the city. John--and weird, how that just slips out and stays, John, John, John--vanishes into thin air by calling dibs on the next maintenance run to the city's underbelly.

In the labs, voluntary waste management means one of three things; pissing off Rod, bad breakup, or an undisclosed psychological disorder. They all knew John was crazy already, so eyes flicker between Lorne and Rod with varying degrees of speculation and accusation.

Rod's notices that ever since John started taking a walk on the kind and gentl(er) side, his own reputation seems to be going down.

The only thing that saves this from being the single most humiliating time of his life is the fact that Lorne's looking stressed whenever Rod sees him, like someone isn't putting out anymore. But that has a corollary with the now empirical fact (based on catching glimpses of John over the week) that John Sheppard is a much better human being when he's getting laid regularly.

The worst part, though--the worst part, the part Rod would have never guessed could be possible--is that he misses John.

Rod gets three inquiries from Heightmeyer, discreet in the fashion of battering rams, before he admits there's a truth here that should have been self-evident. He tolerated John before the personality renaissance of maximum affability (for regular humans, low grade hostility, but an astronomical improvement for Sheppard) and he likes him now, and if he'd know that hitting interdimensional ass would get him to a place where his most significant relationships are with his laptop and *Miko*--

Well, he's not sure, but he's thinks he would have slept alone on the couch.

Miko looks up from her broccoli-like casserole with a concerned expression. "Rod?"

"Tired," he says, hating himself a little for the way her face falls at the short way he answers. She's nice, and she's possibly in love with him, and she's brilliant, and honestly, if he was ever going to settle down to continue the species, she's his second choice, right after Sam Carter.

Looking up, he sees John come in, freshly showered with wet hair scraped messily from his face, in the sweats he acquired from Lorne and never has given back. John looks tired and distracted, grabbing a sandwich and a bottle of water. Rod can see the fresh bruises on his forearm, which means he's just met Teyla for his thrice-weekly masochism session.

"I left something running," Rod says, starting to get to his feet. Miko nods, smiling at him as he leans over to brush a kiss against her cheek, and Rod dumps his tray, following John's path out of the messhall, catching sight of him as he take a right and goes back into the meditation-slash-workout room.

"John," he says, but the door's already closing, so if John heard, he can pretend he didn't. Jogging down the hall, Rod stares at the crystals that refuse to do so much as twitch in his presence.

"John," he says, knocking lightly, like there's some possible mistake. Then harder. "John. Open the door."

Rod pauses, then checks his pockets, coming up with his screwdriver and a handful of mints, slightly the worse for wear. Tossing two into his mouth, Rod stuffs the rest back in his pocket and starts disassembling the door mechanism. He can almost feel John's will pressing against every crystal, and John has a hell of a lot of will. "Don't be such a girl, Sheppard!" Rod yells, ignoring the two biologists who pass him with wide eyes. "Like you've never seen anyone breaking and entering," Rod mumbles to himself, and then wonders if they ever *have*. Or at least seen Rod sitting around committing some kind of misdemeanor for the sake of--oh God. He's breaking into a room to *talk*?

"Or I'm the girl," Rod tells the door bitterly, flipping two crystals. "John, open the door. It's that or the total and utter humiliation of everyone knowing you're in there and I have to disassemble an entire door to get you out. I'll tell them you're crying." Moving another crystal, Rod watches the door as it seems to tremble. "I'll tell them you assuage your broken heart with *anorexia*. And they'll believe me, too."

The door slides open, revealing a silent, empty room, one lit candle, and John, standing against the back wall, stiff and still. The door slides shut reluctantly behind him, as though even the city doesn't trust him alone with John Sheppard.

Fair enough; he's not sure he trusts himself.

The lights come on one quarter, then even into a soft, almost romantic glow--if you ignore the fact that the other half of the romantic fantasy is holding one of Teyla's sticks, tapping it impatiently against the wall.

"Are you going to hit me with that?" Rod says, eyeing the stick warily as he circles the candle, wondering what in the name of God John has against chairs. "Or just hold it and sulk for a little while?"

"I thought I'd throw myself on it, but it's too blunt to penetrate far at the maximum speed I could achieve before impact." John watches him warily, eyes flickering to the door like he's pondering escape. "Is there something you wanted, or is the standing there looking awkward thing working out for you?"

Rod grits his teeth. That's not John's best work by a long shot. "You're losing your touch," Rod says, trying to look less awkward and more relaxed even though he feels like he's going to do something stupid and desperate like ask John what he meant about how being on Rod's team for three years had been a conflict of interest. Something stupid and adolescent like ask why John had slept with him at all, if it was going to lead to drama and avoidance and apparently too much caffeine.

Of course, if Rod had been thinking, he'd have realized sleeping with anyone with the name of Sheppard leads to drama.

"What do you want?"

Rod wants to say, I miss you. I miss the clashing shirts and the temper and the way you make me work for what I want. I miss that you never made it easy. I miss you.

He says, "I'd like you to stop avoiding me. So my entire department doesn't think I'm taking some kind of epic revenge for undisclosed crimes."

John rolls his eyes, leaning the stick into the wall. "I'm meditating."

"And yet you're dressed." John's eyes narrow dangerously, and Rod remembers the stick isn't that far away. "But that's fine. With clothes. Not that I would know."

John snorts, sitting down with his legs crossed neatly as the lights drop to nothing, and Rod notices he took off his runners and socks. Circling to the other side, Rod lowers himself carefully onto the floor, watching John close his eyes, body going pliant and relaxed in a way John never is outside the infirmary and good muscle relaxants. Rod knows enough to be aware he's not supposed to be staring across a candle at John as he melts into something else, something video feeds had never conveyed.

He looks happy, Rod thinks suddenly, feeling a slow wave of guilt for all the times he'd watched the feeds.

"What are you--" Rod stops, tongue-tied and awkward. He shifts uncomfortably on the small rug. "I don't know what to do."

John's eyes flicker open. "It's more--" John frowns slightly. "Close your eyes. Find that--that quiet place in yourself."

Rod closes his eyes. "Right."

"It's not easy at first," John says, voice low, stretching his vowels indecently, and Rod finds himself shivering at the sound of John's voice like this. "It's not supposed to be easy. It's something you have to want, something you--" He stops. "Close your eyes. Open your mind. Just breathe."

Rod draws in a breath, feeling it in his lungs, in his heart, in the tight pulse at the tip of every finger, beating as he tries to echo John's quiet, John's stillness.

When Rod opens his eyes, he sees John is watching him, reflected candlelight in twin flames at the center of hazel eyes--before they flicker closed.

* * *

Ronon is a terrible, terrible drinking buddy.

"Then she says, I want to see other people."

Ronon frowns a little from his slump at the other end of the bed, a pillow between them. Apparently, he's not over that thing about the handjobs yet. Pity, that.

"You were dating?"

Rod sighs and takes another drink. "Apparently so." Rod tries to avoid it, but he keeps flashing back on Miko taking his hand and saying she felt they were not on the same page and that she wanted to see other people. Except with far more words, but Rod had tuned out half-way through, because shock had set in.

Miko had *broken up with him*.

"I'm not that high maintenance," Rod tells the ceiling blearily. "I don't ask much."

"Or anything really. Even to talk to her," Ronon says dryly, picking up the bottle to give it a thoughtful look. "Seriously. Don't you use this for cleaning or something?"

Rod tries to glare, but he just doesn't have the eye coordination for it. "No."

"John uses it for cleaning," Ronon says reasonably, and Rod narrows his eyes and wishes for Sumner, who never argued with him and told hysterically bad jokes when he drank. Ronon, the bastard, never drinks at all. "Have you considered a twelve-step program?"

"All right, no more playdates with the anthropologists for you," Rod says viciously, trying not to move his head too much.

"Movie night," Ronon says knowingly, then shifts to sit against the wall. Rod hates him so much he can barely stand it. "You need something to eat."

"If you say ice cream, I'll have to kill you," Rod promises, but he takes the bottle of water Ronon hands him, drinking half of it before slumping back against the headboard. "I'm a good boyfriend. All my girlfriends thought so."

"Before or after you broke up with them?" Ronon asks. Rod glares at Ronon's shrug. "I'm just saying. You spend all your time in the lab or panting after John. It's not like she's--"

"I do *not*!" Rod regrets sitting up that straight, because wow, new vistas of agony. "I do *nothing* like--"

"It was kind of weird and cute at first, but taking up meditating--"

"It's a team thing!" Rod says weakly. "I thought I should be involved. Since the rest of you left me *out*."

Ronon gives him a cool look. "You never seemed interested."

Well, there's that. Narrow-eyed, Rod considers Ronon. He shoots with Ronon because it's depressing to be around John and his perfect aim, goes on missions with Teyla, argues viciously with John, and enjoys being the greatest head of the science department in history. Up until recently, life was pretty damn good. Then came Colonel Sheppard--Jesus, hot, bad idea, but *so hot*--and John's massive life-changing tantrum, and now-- "I didn't even know you--what do you three do together anyway?"

Ronon shrugs. "Stuff."

"And you never ask me?"

"Did," Ronon says laconically. "You were busy."

Busy. Busy making breakthroughs in science and busy being an administrator and a team leader and--other stuff. Frowning, Rod sits back, staring at the wall. "Do you even like me?"

Ronon gently reaches for the bottle before Rod get it. "You're interesting," Ronon says thoughtfully, squinting as he looks at the Czech label like he's trying to intuit what it says via miraculous enlightenment.

"That's not what I asked."

Ronon shrugs. "You're likable."

Rod looks at him suspiciously. "Thanks. I think."

Ronon smirks, levering himself off the bed. "Come on, let's get something to eat. I think there's pie left from dinner."

Rod sighs. "Whatever. Yeah, okay. Pie." Getting up, he follows Ronon out the door, wandering down the darkened halls of the city. The messhall balcony doors are open as the night shift has their lunch, the cool air waking him up a little. Rod makes a beeline for the pie at the end of the line, then follows Ronon to the balcony, lit around the edges by pale white light to allow just enough ambient light to not fall over yourself.

Rod freezes seconds before Ronon's hand knocks into his chest to stop him.

At the end, far out of sight of the doors, John's leaning into the edge of the balcony, lazily making out with someone Rod's ninety-nine percent sure is Lorne. The one percent that isn't sure is the part that really wants this to be some kind of drunken hallucination.

It's easy, the way people are when they know each other, Lorne's hands tangled in too-long dark hair, and it's slow, just making out because you can. It's adolescent and ridiculous for adult professionals and Rod feels sick and suddenly, irrationally angry. He wants to yell something about appropriate behavior in public, but Ronon's got his arm, pulling him back inside before he's even drawn enough air to get the first word out.

"Huh," Ronon says, steering him into a chair and shoving him back down on it. "Eat." Dropping across from him, Ronon digs into his pastry of choice like they didn't just see their teammate-soon-to-be-former-teammate-God-gotta-do-something-about-that carrying on like a teenage girl in a public place. Rod stares down at his plate and hates the universe.

"They shouldn't do that in public," Rod says, getting a raised eyebrow, like Rod's responsible for that thing on Athos at the harvest festival and those two Athosian women. Which yes, he kind of is, but one, not the point, and two, that wasn't on *Atlantis*. "It's juvenile."

"Lorne's been busy with PT and Sumner's starting to take an interest in off-world stuff," Ronon says between bites. "Haven't seen much of each other."

"How do you know?"

"Been working out with Lorne."

"Do you do anything else?" Rod demands, feeling irrationally betrayed. Across the room, Rod catches the eye of one of the new planetologists, just arrived from the *Daedalus*. "You know, I'd better--"

"I wouldn't," Ronon says, and Rod gives him a narrow look, but Ronon never looks up from his pie. "Won't help."

Slamming down his fork, Rod reaches over and jerks Ronon's pie away. "Okay, stop that. When the hell did you start--"

"I'm just saying," Ronon says, taking his pie back so easily that Rod makes a mental note to hit the gym every day for the foreseeable future, "that sex doesn't solve your problems--"

"They have you watching Oprah," Rod says in horror.

Ronon grins in sunny agreement. "She married?"

Rod pushes his plate aside and lowers his head to the table. Injuring his valuable brain by repeated banging won't help anything, but he really wishes he could. "I'm not--it's not a problem," he tells the wood. No, just maybe a consideration that he hadn't considered until he watched John acting like a hooker out on the balcony. "Everything's gotten so complicated," he complains, feeling the wood agree. "It was easier before." Before what? his mind offers up, curious. Before Colonel Sheppard, before sex with John, before John *had a fit of personal growth*, what? "I didn't rip his virginity from his clinging arms like some kind of evil seducer," Rod tells the floor bitterly. "He lied."

"And time to get you to bed," Ronon says firmly, standing up. Rod lets Ronon pull him to his feet, pie thick and unpleasant in his stomach as he watches Lorne and John emerge from the balcony, wind-blown and red-mouthed and John so relaxed that Rod hates Lorne, hates John, and hates himself, too.

"I barely remember it," Rod says as they go out into the hall, Ronon supporting him in the general direction of the transporters. "The first time. I want to, though. I didn't think--it was just--"

"He wasn't easy," Rod says resentfully. "He just--why is he doing this?"

Ronon shrugs, almost knocking Rod into the wall. "Maybe he thought it was time for a change."

* * *

Nothing seems quite the same after that, the weeks smoothing into the normality of Atlantis that's been missing for a while. John vanishes into his lab again, working on the next generation of almost-ZPMs, Teyla assists Dr. Weir in negotiating a treaty with a civilization that Lorne recently made contact with, and Ronon has fun terrorizing the personnel new to their Atlantis assignment by dint of staring at them while lifting his body weight. It's entertaining; Rod always tries to be around to watch.

"This is good," Rod says approvingly at the new power conservation projections. It's always been his policy to make sure his people know when they do good work. "Double check it and start running simulations. If it works, we'll start integration into the power grid this month." Giving Simpson a nod, he checks in with the repair crew currently trying to get power to a new group of labs that just opened up. Sheppard's holed up alone in one of the smaller labs trying to rework his design for the almost-ZPMs.

Everything feels relatively normal again. Rod looks up in time to see a quick, brilliant smile from the blonde engineer working with Kusanagi, a flush staining her face. Rod grins back, ducking to look at Zelenka's figures while trying to remember why she seems familiar. 

"Dr. McKay," the radio chirps, Elizabeth Weir's voice tinny and tight. "Could you come to my office, please?"

Frowning, Rod leaves Zelenka to supervise, wondering if the mission schedules have changed since the last staff meeting. With Ronon about to be off medical leave, their first mission is scheduled for the next week.

Of course, Lorne's off medical leave, too, and Rod feels his chest go tight as he walks into Dr. Weir's office. "Dr. Weir?"

"Please sit down, Dr. McKay." Leaning her elbows on the desk, she gives him a steady look. "I've been reviewing John's transfer request."

Rod leans back, arms crossed. "I denied it."

Dr. Weir nods thoughtfully. "I noticed that, yes. Can you tell me why?"

"We need John," Rod answers steadily, trying to control the urge to fidget or throw something. "There are plenty of scientists--"

"But none with John's experience."

"Lorne's team is first contact," Rod answers. "That is, planets with known human activity, with a greater chance of the necessity of hostile engagement. When we arranged the teams, Ferria went to Lorne because she had the military background. John doesn't. He'd be at best a hindrance, and at worst, an active danger to the team."

"I have Teyla's report here," Dr. Weir says, and Rod stomach rolls over. "As well as Sumner's. John tested out of hand-to-hand at a level that Sumner finds acceptable for a military-based team."

"Sumner's report?"

Dr. Weir looks at him in surprise. "Last week, the Marines offered a boot camp for civilian personnel. Dr. Sheppard asked to participate. I thought you knew."

So he's--not in his lab working on a new and improved almost-ZPM Release 2.0. Rod blinks slowly, reviewing the roster he'd been given and had signed off on without looking. Some anthropologists, a few of the zoologists, a chemist-- "Right."

Dr. Weir looks at him worriedly. "Dr. McKay?"

"Never mind." Rod tries to remember the last month, but it's all a slow blur of normal shifts and normal interactions, which maybe should have told him something. He didn't see his team much--but then he rarely used to see them between missions anyway--but he was working and researching and being an excellent administrator while John vanished from sight, and for some reason, Rod hadn't even noticed.

Now, of course, he knows. John was lulling him into a false sense of security.

"We still need John," Rod says firmly.

"Your team rarely engages in hostile contact," Dr. Weir says gently. "Now that John has solved a great deal of our internal power problems, our primary objective should be to establish relations with other civilizations in the galaxy, especially with the information both you and Colonel Sheppard gave us in regard to the potential Wraith threat." Leaning back, Dr. Weir studies him for a second, and Rod doesn't like that look at all.

"Our priority should continue to be scientific missions."

"And it still is a very important part of Atlantis' charter," Dr. Weir answers. "Which is why I am considering Sumner's suggestion of rearranging the teams. When this began, the need for ZPMs dominated our missions. Now we can shift toward studying the Ancient tech we've already discovered that we were unable to investigate thoroughly. I did keep note of your objections when we had to leave some facilities without further study."

Jesus Christ. "Yes," Rod says slowly, and Dr. Weir smiles. "I did object." At length.

"What I thought you might consider is a change in how Atlantis' field operations will be handled. We can rearrange the roster to allow three first contact teams to vet potential sites, while two teams handle investigation and research." Rod watches in shock as she slides a paper across to him. Picking it up, Rod reads it numbly. "Your team will continue to have regular missions, of course, but, to break from the SGC model, I'd also like you to lead a second research team to sites we've already marked as potentially valuable repositories of scientific data to further our understanding of the Pegasus technology."

Rod reads down the list. "Ronon and Teyla--"

"Lorne's asked, and Teyla has agreed, that Teyla be moved to his team during your research missions," Dr. Weir answers. "Major Arnes has requested the same for Ronon. It's a break from the SGC model, but in this case, it would allow all three first contact teams to have an experienced Pegasus native to guide them."

"That will halve the number of regular missions I'll participate in," Rod says shortly. Even to himself, he sounds hostile, and Dr. Weir looks at him in surprise. Right. Smoothing his voice, Rod tries again. "Can I have some time to look this over?" Rod says slowly, working to keep his voice light and pleasant.

"Of course." With a pleased smile, Dr. Weir sits back, having rearranged the world to her liking. "Get back to me with your suggestions."

* * *

Rod takes ten minutes in the transporter to methodically go through his list of Ancient profanity before calmly touch his radio. "Dr. Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon, please meet me in--" The meditation room? The work-out room? The lounge? Jesus, where do they meet outside of missions? "Where are you?"

"I am currently meditating," Teyla says, which means John's meditation room, since she found the room more aesthetically pleasing than the one she'd been using.

"There," he says. "McKay out."

He doesn't storm--he's not John Sheppard, drama queen extraordinaire--but all three of them look at him with varying stages of wariness as he drops down on a spare rug and shoves the paper in John's face. "When did you know about this?"

Frowning, John takes it, reading it at a glance, and there's no mistaking the surprise on his face. Passing it to Ronon, John looks at him curiously. "New teams?"

"New *everything*," Rod bites out, getting a sharp glance from Teyla. "You two. What was that about?"

"Colonel Sumner and Major Lorne did come to speak with me," Teyla says slowly. "I did not know anything had been decided." Her eyes flicker to Ronon as he reads over the sheet, then passes back to Rod. "They explained to me how my assistance would be necessary for the shift in Atlantean priorities of exploration."

"And you didn't think to *tell me*?"

Teyla's eyebrows raise. "I was not aware you did not know." Ronon nods agreement, eyebrows drawn tightly together. "Nor that you would have any objections. It follows some of your own suggestions regarding the priority of scientific study--"

"Are you quoting me? Because if you are, roll back to the fact they're *splitting up my team*. Which I never requested or suggested at any time. And you--" Rod turns on John, aware that he's got to look like an idiot, but this is his, this team. With sick clarity, he remembers every time he memo'ed Dr. Weir insisting they needed more time with the new tech, more time to study, every objection he'd lodged when they'd left a planet only half-explored. She'd been *listening*. "Boot camp?"

John frowns, drawing back defensively. "Lorne suggested I try it out if I was serious."

"Serious about *what*? Putting yourself in danger? Trying out a new image as a *grunt*? You're a *scientist*. What the hell are you trying to prove?"

John flushes, something dangerous crossing his face, dangerous because this is John Sheppard and he's never met a blunt statement he couldn't make insulting. "Did you get off on it?" John says, voice low. "You got back from your little cross-dimensional jaunt full of how much better than you were than McKay. You sat in the labs and told us what it was like over there, how great everyone was, how great *Colonel Sheppard* was. Did. You. Like. It?"

Rod blinks, reviewing his first days back with a sinking feeling. Oh shit.

"I--"

"When you said. At least. McKay had *friends*."

"John," Teyla says in a low voice.

"You were there a few days, and when you told us about it, you told us how you got along with his sister and his team and his *Colonel Sheppard*, how great they were, how great *he* was. How much you were nothing like him. How much I was."

And his day just officially got worse. "I was *kidding*. I didn't mean--"

"That's such bullshit I can't even believe I'm sitting here listening to it." Stumbling to his feet, John looks in danger of toppling over on Teyla's candles. "You know what? I'm not an officer in the military. I could have been. I never wanted it. I love my work. I love what I can do, what I can build. I love my job and I love this city and I loved exploring new planets with you. And you came back to tell us how much better we could be, if we were just more like *them*."

Ronon shifts. "I didn't like Colonel Sheppard that much," he offers, getting a scathing glance from Rod. "What?"

"Oh, Jesus." John throws up his hands. "Fine. Whatever. I have actual work to do--"

"Pissing contests with the Marines?" Rod says without thinking, and Jesus, what the hell is wrong with him? "Sorry, sorry, no, John, it wasn't like that--"

"You couldn't have him, because he wanted to go home," John say brutally. "No matter how much his world sucked, and his McKay sucked, he still wanted them back. Not you. Not here. So it just begs the question, if you would have traded the rest of us in if you had the chance. Because from where I'm standing, it sure as hell looks like it."

John turns angrily, nearly tripping over his own feet as Teyla, with a quick, unreadable glance at Rod, stands up, going after him with more decorum, but not a little speed. Ronon doesn't so much as twitch, but then, he's like that.

"I never would have--" Rod stops, looking at Ronon. "You know I wouldn't. I never would have traded you for anyone else. Any of you."

Ronon nods agreeably, but again, he's *like that*. "I know." Rod gets a second of breathing room--of course John overreacted. Of *course*. Then, "Of course, I only heard once or a few times about his amazing knife collection." Ronon frowns. "I still don't get the knives."

Rod buries his head in his hands. "So not the point."

Ronon grunts thoughtfully. "Maybe your point is wrong."

* * *

John, fresh from being beat the shit out of by Marines for a week, proceeds to indulge in a tantrum unlike *anything* anyone has ever seen. They know John Sheppard, and he's had his moments, but apparently, John had been holding back.

When Rod's called for the fifth time in two hours to mediate before someone dies (and now it's not necessarily John that will go down; apparently the Marines taught him some dirty tricks along the way that led to at least one visit to the infirmary with John looking on in surprise), he knows something has to give. And from experience, he knows it won't be John's temper.

John's alone in his lab, mostly due to having sent Kavanagh into a fit that's now spread the horror across the chemists and is slowly working its way through biology, where John already brought three to the point of tears. No one's happy, and Rod tries to remember if it was like this Before (Before the trans-dimensional trip, Before Colonel Sheppard, Before that night with John, Before), and he's not sure.

Before John, he thinks spitefully, and it actually crosses his mind to get him transferred, but just imagining Dr. Weir's gentle queries on why they're sending the only man who can build almost-ZPMs back to earth makes him queasy, and worse, he doesn't want to.

He actually doesn't *want* to. Atlantis without John Sheppard is an Atlantis he can't imagine. Stopping short at the door of John's lab, Rod takes a moment to think about what he's going to say. John's not the same--to be honest with himself, Rod admits that it's something he's still struggling with, learning John's new language--and he's never taken orders anyway. John's still himself, but he's something else, too, and whether it was watching his more approachable self for weeks being treated like the greatest improvement to the species since they started walking upright, or Rod's vodka-inspired sex is a debatable and mostly moot point. John's *changed*. And it's better, Rod admits, to himself, even if he does miss John's singular ability to use five words to bring someone to their knees. But it's more than that.

Rod's changed, and he's not sure in his own skin anymore. They've all changed, and he's not sure why, or how, but he knows Teyla actually gets annoyed when he corrects her history and Ronon dislikes most forms of alcohol. He's learned--

He's learned Teyla sleeps badly and meditates at night, that Ronon hates to fly but lets John take him up anyway because John loves to; he's learned that his team has *hobbies*, and that they'll follow where he leads but possibly don't know him at all.

And he's learned that he hates McKay a lot more than he'd ever suspected, because it keeps circling in his head, slow and inevitable, remembering when McKay would snap and Colonel Sheppard would smile with fond exasperation, McKay would yell and Teyla would soothe, McKay would growl and Ronon would give him food. They mocked him and laughed at him and protected him with everything in them. They worked with him and played with him and they loved him. They *knew* him, the parts that humiliated Rod to see exposed to any eyes that cared to see, the insecurity and the fear and the bravado, a walking advertisement for all the things that Rod's denied in himself for more years than he can count.

They *knew* McKay and still liked him, liked him for everything he was and everything he wasn't and everything he could be. Rod had tolerated John for a mind unlike any he had ever seen, and a body that was made for sex.

When he walks into John's lab, John looks at him with wary exhaustion. Apparently he no longer derives energy from the people he destroys. Being a bitch is work now. "What did you want to be?" Rod asks, and John frowns, hand hovering protectively over his keyboard. "You never--I was just curious. Why you chose this."

"Fermi," John says, then shakes his head. "Rod--"

"I want to know."

He does. He wants to know. He knows John graduated from high school three years early, that John breezed through MIT like someone who never bothered sleeping, knows who John's thesis advisor was, his GPA, his unfortunate history with certain professors, but right now, he has no idea what makes John tick.

Settling uncomfortably on the stool, John stares down at his laptop for a moment. "When I was eight, this kid came on TV doing stupid math tricks. Memorization, most of it. Half of it was stupid. But my parents were amazed. And they thought I was nuts when I said anyone could do it. Turns out, I was wrong. Not everyone can. But I could." John shifts uncomfortably. "So they found this guy to test me, and--my dad was career military. We couldn't--we never stayed in one place. But this guy said that--that I'd be wasted if I kept--if they kept moving me around." John shrugs. "So they let me go."

"Let you--"

"A school for kids like me. Kids my age were playing baseball, I was learning quantum mechanics. We worked on projects that they sold to the US government after we were done. They showed us off at different places, had us perform to get the funding to keep the school going. And it did. We hadn't even hit puberty and were being recruited by the top schools in the world. I was thirteen and MIT was camping out on our doorstep promising us anything we wanted." John flushes. "It was normal, do you--do you understand?"

"You were actually, literally, raised in a lab." Jesus, that explains so much. And also, tactless. "Right. Forget I said that. I just--"

"Well." John grins suddenly. "Yeah." John gestures, taking in the room with a flicker of his fingers. "MIT was okay--we all were together there and most people left us alone. After we split up, it--changed. The SGC wasn't bad, you know. I mean, I was around stupid people, but they gave me my own lab when I--applied enough pressure. Sam wasn't too bad," John says thoughtfully, and Rod tenses for a second, hoping to God that this doesn't lead to another long soliloquy about Dr. Jackson, because Rod can't deal with that right now. "But--it wasn't the same. Not like school."

Rod lets out a breath. "You *do* know people aren't stupid just to annoy you."

John's eyes narrow. "I really don't believe that."

Jesus. Leaning into a lab table, Rod draws in a deep breath. "So--all of this--"

John raises an eyebrow, leaning back into the lab table. "Before Colonel Sheppard left, he caught me in the jumper bay," he says, and Rod tries not to be annoyed that everyone's started calling them that. Gateships are a great name. That no one uses now. Ever. "We had a talk."

Rod swallows, trying to imagine how that went. "After--"

"Obviously, my concentration was off," John says shortly, and Rod decides not to argue the point. "Anyway, he--well, anyway. We took a flight in the jumper." John's eyes go distant. "I didn't understand how he could waste his life away wearing a uniform when he could have been--well. But when he touched the controls, it was--they don't respond to us like that," John says. "He loves it. He loves them. They respond to him. I was taking readings the entire time, and you should have been there, it was *amazing*--and he shoved me into the pilot's seat and I--"

John stops, mouth soft and oddly vulnerable, hazel eyes half-closed.

"I could see it how he saw it. The jumper. The city. His life. I don't--I never wanted anything like that. But I could see how he could." John pauses, then admits reluctantly, "Okay. I do know people aren't stupid just to annoy me, fine. I just don't have to *like* it."

Rod almost smiles. Coming closer, he leans into the table beside John. "I never would have given you up."

John's faint smile flips off like a lightswitch, and he turns back to the laptop, back as straight as a broomstick. "Rod--"

"No, wait." His finger touch Lorne's t-shirt--what is it with John wandering off with Lorne's clothes anyway? It's juvenile--pulling John back around to face him. "No. Look, you--it wasn't about you. It was--I was being an asshole, okay? I mean, not approaching the pinnacles you've achieved, naturally, but--he was different. It was different." It was John, but stripped of the sharp edges, smart and funny and exotic. Approachable. A Sheppard that Rod could *have*. "And he seemed to like me."

John snorts softly. "And I don't."

"I don't believe you."

John stares at his laptop, like it can grow feet and run away, so he can chase it and start talking about Atlantis being sentient again. Or, like he can get away from this conversation. "You aren't the worst boss I've ever had."

"You know, if your boss is someone you never listen to and pretend doesn't exist for long stretches of time, sure."

John rolls his eyes, but it's not like it's not true. "Look--"

"John," and Rod's fingers slip, brushing the silky skin of his neck, and he can't quite make himself stop them. Stepping closer, he watches John's head tilt up, something flaring vivid and green in his eyes, half-way between resignation and something far more fragile. Rod strokes up the side of John's throat, feeling the shiver of skin beneath his fingers before he's cupping Sheppard's jaw, stubble rough beneath his palm.

"Do you remember what you said to me?" John says softly, turning his face into Rod's palm with a nuzzle that goes straight to his cock. "That first--that night?"

Rod stares at John's mouth and tries to remember English. It's not easy. "Sure. That you were hot."

"That I was hot," John agrees, voice low. "That you wanted me. That you wanted me the first time you saw me." John shifts, head level with Rod's, leaning so close that Rod can feel John's breath against his mouth. "That you liked me." Hands rest lightly on his shoulders, and John's lips brush his, so sweet that Rod's leaning into it, wanting more. "You told me everything I'd wanted to hear for three years. And I knew you didn't mean a word you said."

Rod jerks back, but John's grip is a little too strong. This is what comes of John getting involved with Air Force ass, Rod thinks. He starts going to the *gym*. "The thing is, Rod? I didn't care."

A clatter, and John's on the other side of the lab stool, leaving Rod clutching air.

"John--"

"I knew what you were like. I knew every person you slept with. I knew what you told them. I just--I didn't *care*."

"And you cared a hell of a whole lot when you came to *me* the other night!" Rod says, and God, he wants to take it back, because John goes pale, and this, Rod thinks, is probably one of those things that John was happily planning never to talk about again. John's always had a bad effect on him. Always.

"You fucking--"

The door swishes open so suddenly even John's surprised, because no one comes in here but Rod if they can help it, and Rod turns in time to see Lorne standing there, looking at them with an amused frown. Rod wonders viciously if John has been saving his inner bitch for his coworkers or if Lorne's just exhausting him every night so he doesn't face the brunt of it. "Hey."

John frowns, ducking his head to look at his laptop, trying to squint enough to see the time. "Huh. I didn't realize it was that late."

"That's new and interesting," Lorne says patiently, "considering you say that every night. Dinner."

John looks like he wants to protest, then catches Rod's eyes and remembers he's in the room. "Right." Closing the laptop, John scrambles to stuff it in his bag with a lack of care that says more about his state of mind than the flush on his face. Jerking it over his shoulder, he gives Rod a wary look, like he's expecting Rod to break out with a full description of John's infidelity, and honestly, Rod really wants to slap him for that. "I have PT in the morning," John says, directing his words to the wall just behind Rod's head. "I'll be in late. Night."

Rod watches him walk out, Lorne stepping back to let John pass, forgetting Rod is even in there, watching, one hand settling briefly on John's shoulder as they walk away.

Rod's still standing there when the door closes. "I never lied," Rod tells the lab, wondering if he's imagining the skepticism radiating from it. Well, great. Turning on a heel, Rod goes to the door, wondering suddenly if this is how McKay had felt when he visited his Atlantis. "I'm sorry," he tells the room. "Also, I'm talking to myself. This is how crazy starts. Talking to a *city*."

This would probably be a good time to visit Heightmeyer, he thinks morosely, going back into his lab and snatching a clipboard from Zelenka to pretend to be productive. Or at least pick up a decent drinking habit.

* * *

Teyla kicks him, startling him awake. "Dr. McKay, please stop snoring."

Straightening, Rod frowns, glancing at the candles--which are considerably shorter than he remembers them being when he closed his eyes--and trying to discreetly work the crick out of his back. "I was finding zen," he says, to which Teyla raises a disbelieving eyebrow. "Right. Bad night."

"You seemed tired today." Teyla smiles, uncrossing her legs and leaning back on one arm casually, reminding Rod of that time on Athos they've never talked about even once, nor mentioned in any way, shape, or form.

"Do you think I use sex to feel better about myself?"

The dark eyes go wide. Rod remembers abruptly that she's a lot stronger than he is. "Dr. McKay."

Rod waves it off. "Sheppard's taking a kinder, gentler approach to human contact, so I thought I'd take up the slack on the tactless front. I mean--of course I don't, I like myself. I'm just wondering--"

"I think sometimes you do not engage in--intimate relations for the right reasons," Teyla says slowly, like she's speaking through her teeth.

"I like sex." And who doesn't? Once they've had it. Of course, then he remembers John and winces. "And if the other person is willing--"

"Then why are you asking me this question?" Teyla blows out the candles abruptly, plunging the room into darkness. Rod quickly thinks the lights on, illuminating an unpleasantly tight expression on Teyla's face. Hmm. "If you are happy with this, then there is no reason to worry." Gathering the candles, she rolls up her rug, and Rod quickly slides off his, rolling into a sloppy pile before taking it over to her.

"I just--this may be the longest conversation we've had," Rod says, which isn't exactly true, but fairly close. "We've known each other for three years and I--I just realized I don't really know you."

Teyla pushes her roll into her bag. "You have many duties."

"We all do. That doesn't mean I can't--"

Teyla lifts her head, looking at him with unreadable eyes, and Rod stops. "What do you wish to say, Dr. McKay?"

"You could use my name, for one. You never do."

Teyla tucks her candles in, closing the bag and tying the ties off. "I had not noticed," she answers, standing up. "If you will excuse me, I need to change before I give John his stick lesson."

"Right. I'm sorry. I just--" Rod watches her incline her head, turning on a heel to walk to the door. "Teyla! When we--" Jesus, he's suicidal, so what if she doesn't have the sticks, she could kill him with *candles*. Licking his lips, he forces himself to keep talking. "After. Were you--did you expect something else from me?"

Teyla pauses at the door. "No, Dr. McKay. I can say that I honestly never expected anything else from you." With another incline of her head, she walks out, and Rod finds himself staring at the open door with that strange sense of something missed.

"Teyla." Running to the door, he looks out, but Teyla's already gone--anywhere away from here, he supposes, slumping against the frame. Going out, he waves the door closed behind him.

* * *

John's improvement with the sticks seems to synchronize with the sudden degradation of his personal life. Rod thinks that says something about motivation being the key to success, because John improves, like, *overnight*.

Or maybe the anger he's always taken out on others he's turning on his body.

Rod comes in one day to see John actually disarm Teyla before he trips over his own feet at the sound of Rod and hits the floor with what will be bruising impact. Rod winces for him.

"Dr. McKay," Teyla says, looking relieved as she shakes out her injured hand. John rights himself into a sitting position, scowling at the floor. "I did not expect--"

"John has a mission tomorrow." Rod pauses, watching John's head come up sharply. "A temporary assignment, since Ronon still has another week before Dr. Beckett will be comfortable with the healing on his leg and there's not another scientist ready to go out in the field."

John's back straightens, the scowl smoothing. "I wasn't told."

"I'm telling you." Rod waits, but John just watches him. "It's temporary."

"Until you stop voicing stupid objections, you mean," John snorts. When Rod opens his mouth, John rolls his eyes. "Lorne doesn't need to tell me. Command codes. You really should have told someone I took them."

Actually, he really should have. It's a breach of security he'd completely forgotten about. "So you read senior staff reports? I tremble for your evil mastermind ways."

"I could have hacked them the normal way, but the sys-admin's a bitch and it would have taken too long to get around her." John gets to his feet awkwardly, the strange grace he'd shown with Teyla gone. Apparently, John's left his zen space completely.

He's also talking less, and the labs are mostly quiet, but it's the kind of quiet that's waiting for an explosion of some kind, with wary footsteps around John and offers of coffee and gay porn (Rod officially refuses to ask what anyone carries on their jump drives, because honestly, he just doesn't want to know), while Lorne and John hold the city hostage to their personal drama. For three years, Rod thinks sadly, everyone was professional and civil and normal. Now, they're all watching with bated breath as John and Lorne circle each other warily, a silent, uncomfortable argument that erupts in frozen polite inquiries about work from Lorne and John practicing his mime skills at dinner every night.

God alone knows what goes on behind closed doors, but from the way they're both acting, no one is getting laid.

Including Rod, come to think. And this is the worst time to realize that, because John is three sweaty feet away, in loose track pants that have never belonged to anyone else and a t-shirt from the last Daedalus run. That's because Rod found out that the botanists have been doing John's laundry and unfortunately, Ancient washers keep losing key pieces of overbright clothing, or so they say. Rod had sensibly broken into the requisition log and made sure that everything John had ordered matched.

That had been a long hour.

So John's hot. But John hot in eye-searing clothing is a different animal from the hot that's standing in front of him, flushed and sweaty, tanned from PT with the Marines.

Yeah, Rod thinks sadly as John trips over his own feet getting to his workout bag. I've got it *bad*. "You should get a haircut," Rod says abruptly, and God, it's like he's unknowingly absorbed John's ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.

"I'll wear a skirt first," John says with a tight smile, throwing his bag over his shoulder. "I'd better check my email. Lorne's team always meets the evening before to do mission planning." Going to Teyla, he bows his head, forehead brushing hers, one hand gentle on her shoulder. "Thanks. I had a good time."

"I did as well," Teyla says with a smile in her voice. A few seconds pass as Rod watches John wander out with a single wary glance at him. Rod doesn't even realize he hasn't taken his eyes from John until the door shuts and Teyla clears her throat. Turning around--yes, he's being obvious, and honestly, he just doesn't care--Rod shrugs. "He's getting better."

"He has learned to relax," Teyla says, gathering her things together.

"God knows he needs to," Rod says thoughtfully. "Is he--" Rod makes a gesture he hopes conveys concern and not a really embarrassing amount of hope as well. Teyla just stares at him. "Fine, fine. I know he talks to you. Is he okay?"

Teyla pauses, looking at him steadily. "Do you want to know because you are worried about him or because you have some thought of--"

"Fucking him while he's vulnerable? He could kill me with his sticks now." What an image. Rod banishes the thought of John and sticks and a bed as quickly as possible, but Teyla's expression darkens, so no, apparently, he didn't hide a goddamn thing. "I'm concerned. He's my friend."

"I see." Sliding her bag over one shoulder, Teyla shrugs. She has to have picked that up from John--she's never done it before, and she does it like he does, one shouldered and meant to annoy the hell out of whoever sees it. "He is well."

"He's not." Teyla looks away. "Teyla. Seriously."

Teyla pauses, dark eyes evaluating him. He wonders for a split second what makes her expression soften like that, mouth loosening as she hooks her bag over one shoulder. "He is tense," she admits, like she's admitting to having filmed pornography during college to buy books or something. She eyes Rod sternly. "He is having a difficult time. Do not make it more so."

"I don't plan to." Rod frowns at Teyla when her eyes narrow, wondering if she's learned to read him that well. "He's my friend. I don't want to hurt him."

Teyla nods dubiously, bag hiking up on her shoulder. Before she can move away, Rod takes a breath, coming up as close as he dares, smelling Athosian spice and sweat from the warm afternoon, remembering an Athosian tent, a early morning departure, and banishes them all at once. The dark eyes widen, fixing on him for a moment, before strong hands rest lightly on his shoulders, and he tilts his head enough for their foreheads to touch. Rod breathes her in, eyes closing at the simple warmth. "Thanks," he whispers.

Teyla's fingers tighten, leaning into him just a little, enough to share the warmth of her body, before she pulls back, looking up at him with a smile. "Perhaps the next lesson, you should join us."

* * *

The thing is, when the offworld activation alarm sounds two hours too early, Rod's first instinct isn't to run to the gateroom to see John being wheeled out on a gurney. Lorne's scheduled mission was boring, the planet was pastoral, and John had the odd kind of luck that assured any disasters that came up always caused major intergalactic incidents. People in mud huts? Not really a problem.

In retrospect, though, it's exactly what he should have done.

He doesn't remember who called him. He barely registered the voice that told him John was being taken in for unspecified injuries. He remembers his laptop hitting the floor, and then he's in the infirmary, with Carson's voice soothing in the background while he pushes Lorne into a wall, hands balled into fists that will smash through skin and bone if only these idiots pulling him back would give him the chance. Near his ear, Teyla's voice murmurs mindless, pointless words, small hands like iron as they pull him back, and somewhere, Rod thinks he can hear Ronon saying something filthy before it penetrates that he personally just lost it in a big way in a public place.

Weirdly, though, he just doesn't care.

First contact with something like bullets, and it's not like John's in danger from a bleeding graze, but tell that to Rod's instincts, when he watched Ronon almost bleed out over Teyla's shoulder, watched John go still and silent and cold when he made three precise shots into three enemy chests. Tell that to his head, that sees the day they bring John back in a bodybag. Tell that to the frozen tightness in his chest that makes it hard to breathe and impossible to think.

When he's promised he won't try to kill Lorne, Teyla lets him go a safe distance away. "Dr. McKay," she says softly, seating herself in the chair beside him. "It was only a graze."

"They're Marines," Rod says, staring at the curtain that Carson retreated behind. Hands fisted in his lap, Rod tries not to remember the blood on Carson's shirt, the way that Lorne watches the curtained bed, like he isn't sure John will be coming out. "He never should have--"

"He understands the risk he takes," Teyla says firmly. One delicate-looking hand covers his, calluses scraping his skin as their fingers lace together, a reminder that this was and is her life, Ronon's life, their lives. That this is what John's chosen to do. "We all do." 

"But he--"

"He *knows*." Ronon, leaning on the wall beside Teyla, nods sober acknowledgement of what Rod realizes is something he should have known all along. John knew. John worked to be this, become a person that could do this. The only person surprised is Rod himself. And he's not really that surprised at all.

"Rod?" Carson says softly, lifting the curtain enough peer out. Rod pushes up from his chair, ducking behind the curtain to see John in fresh infirmary scrubs with a new bandage on his side, a loopy smile, and wide, glassy eyes. "He'll be fine," Carson says with a hand on Rod's shoulder, gently squeezing. "A bit of rest will see him through." After a few seconds, Carson leaves, and Rod leans into the side of the bed, needing the support more than he's ever needed the image.

"Hey Meredith." Just to remind Rod that he's a complete and utter asshole. In case Rod had forgotten. Moving closer, Rod looks down into drug-darkened eyes, running a gentle finger just above the IV line.

"You're stoned," Rod says, feeling like an idiot for saying it, but mostly because talking is the only thing stopping him from crawling up on the bed and stripping John until he can see every inch of unmarred skin. John carries enough scars: the line on his face, pale against newly tanned skin; the raw, barely-healed wound his shoulder; and now a third. He reaches for John's hand, surprised all anew by the gun calluses on his thumb, the length of his palm reddened and sensitive when Rod touches it. John's smile widens dopily, and Rod gropes for a chair with one foot, unwilling to let go for even a second. "You okay?" he asks, though as high as John is right now, he's probably doing better than anyone in the city.

"Sure," John says, eyes turning to the ceiling like there are cartoons playing on the cool metal. "Awesome."

Rod sits down, keeping hold of John's hand, though probably a bad idea, what with Lorne and his team right outside. He just doesn't care. He'll let go when they pry his cold, dead fingers away. "You were shot."

"I don't think they meant it," John tells Rod's chest seriously. "And I'm pretty sure it was an accident. They were barely evolved enough for opposable thumbs, much less the coordination and brilliance necessary for good aim."

"It's nice to know your sense of humor is still intact."

"I only wish I were joking," John sighs, blinking drunkenly. "I didn't think you'd be here."

Breath catching, Rod tightens his grip, but John doesn't seem to notice. "I'll always be here, John."

John nods with wide eyes and absolutely no comprehension. "Did you notice that the ceiling catches color from everything?"

Rod swallows hard. "No, I didn't."

John's silent, apparently counting imaginary colors on the ceiling while Rod stares at the bandage. John's hand shifts in his, fingers threading between his own. "Is this what you wanted?" Rod asks the bandage softly. Reaching out, he strokes careful fingers a breath above the plain white gauze on his side.

John's fingers jerk in his, then tighten, and Rod looks up to see steady hazel eyes look at him. "What I want," John breathes with a strange, sad smile, licking his lips. "I don't know."

"You don't--don't have to do this. Not for Lorne. Not for anyone."

"Maybe for me," John whispers. "Maybe I need to know." The hazel eyes drift closed.

"Know what?"

But John's asleep.

* * *

The nurses know before Rod does, but only by five minutes.

John goes to the lab in flagrant violation of Carson's orders, which is less a surprise than a new and strange immutable law of physics. Rod blinks at his monitor when it tells him the room is powering up, even though he knows for a fact that John will skin and eat anyone who even breathes in his space when he's not there. When Rod touches the lab door, it opens almost before he thinks, revealing John pale and unhappy slumped over a table with the component parts of a third-generation almost-ZPM.

John takes a long time to look up, and the quiet, still face tells stories of an argument in the infirmary and Lorne storming out--stories that later, Rod will pay nurses good chocolate to relate. In detail. "Bed," Rod says firmly, and John looks like he might argue, but what the hell. Rod pushes John's hands from his laptop and packs it himself while John stands unsteadily, leaning against the lab bench until Rod leads him, frighteningly passive, to his room.

John frowns like he might be considering rebellion, but Rod hustles him inside, making him change out of his field uniform with the rip up the side from a bullet and into clean, soft sweats and a t-shirt, pushing him into his bed and asking kindly if John needs a personal decorator because the prison chic look went out a long time ago.

"Asshole," John mutters, sleepy-eyed and rumpled, but he lies down when he touches the mattress, pulling the covers up to his chin. "I'm fine."

"Maybe." Rod watches as he fights sleep. "I'm staying right here until you are safely unconscious. So just go with it."

"Fascist," John says, but he closes his eyes firmly, and Rod stops himself from stroking the dark hair falling over John's eyes by dint of sitting on his hands. "Such a fucking bad week."

"Yeah," Rod says softly. Don't touch, he tells himself firmly. Not even now, when John rolls onto his side, head only inches from Rod's leg. Don't touch. Especially now. "Sleep."

John's drifting when the door buzzes annoyingly, and Rod stumbles to his feet, getting to the door before the second buzz, opening it with sharp words already spilling over to see Lorne standing there, unhappy and finger raised to do it again, face traveling through a confusing mix of expressions before settling on something just left of resigned.

"He's sleeping," Rod says, harsher than he means to be, because Lorne doesn't look much better than John.

Lorne shifts uncomfortably, looking anywhere but at Rod. "He left the infirmary. I just wanted to make sure he was--that he was okay."

"He's fine," Rod answers, leaning into the door, because Lorne will get to John over his dead body. "Would be better if you hadn't gotten him shot. But resting," he clarifies.

"And he needs you to watch over him?" Lorne says, flushing slightly.

Rod shrugs, one-shouldered (God, now he's doing it, too). "Someone has to." And you don't have the right, he tries to imply with a glare, but that's a lot of words for a look, so Rod can't be sure it translated well.

It's weird, Rod thinks suddenly--there's this possibility he and Lorne are standing here actually *posturing* over a sleeping mathematician who's still stoned on painkillers. No one would believe it, even if they could watch it live. *Rod* doesn't believe it. And yet he's doing it.

"Good night, Major," Rod says, stepping back just as John makes a sound halfway between a snuffle and a very hacking cough.

"Water," John mutters without opening his eyes, one hand groping vaguely toward the edge of the bed like he's expecting water from heaven. "Rod?"

Rod is a petty man, and he's always known that, no matter how much he tries to hide it. For once, he doesn't even want to. Turning away, he shuts the door in Lorne's face.

Then he goes to the bathroom to get John some water.

* * *

Rod takes John off-duty for two days after checking in with Carson, which John protests at length in language Rod's sure the Ancients never would have approved of. Rod gets Teyla and Ronon to break into the kitchen for their limited supply of popcorn and traps John in his room with the new season of *Dr. Who*, which is like John-catnip.

John stays sulky right until the first episode starts, then forgets to be pissed while explaining the entire history of *Dr. Who* to a bemused Ronon and Teyla.

Teyla's taken with Rose while Ronon watches for familiar aliens ("No, really, they didn't consult the SGC--what do you mean you've *seen Daleks*?"), and John gets a kind of religious ecstasy from the popcorn, making sounds that have both Ronon and Teyla turning their heads in surprise while Rod finds a pillow to hide beneath before John notices that Rod's reaction isn't PG-rated.

It's warm and comfortable and easy in a way that Rod's never quite felt before. Teyla falls asleep against John's shoulder while Ronon makes Rod explain the history of sci-fi. Rod wakes up the next morning in a tight, uncomfortable ball at the foot of John's bed with Teyla's feet in his stomach and Ronon snoring like a freight train a few inches away.

It's probably the best morning-after he's had in years.

* * *

"How can you be this good?" Rod complains when John dumps him on his ass for the third time. His only real consolation is the fact that John looks as surprised as he feels. "You fall over your own shoelaces, even when you're not wearing shoes! This is that gene, I can feel it."

"You are both doing well," Teyla praises from the sidelines, where she and Ronon have been fighting a fit of laughter for a full quarter hour. "Many Athosian children would fear you with sticks. Very, very small children."

John turns toward her lazily while he offers Rod a hand up from the floor. "You know," and John twirls the fucking stick, just because he can, and Rod hasn't quite figured out how to do that yet, "we should have a nice game of prime not prime." John's eyebrows arch upward. "To remind some people in the room that we are valuable for our irreplaceable brilliance, not our ability to grunt on command."

Teyla smirks at them both while Ronon leans back, with the look of a man who has eaten an excellent dinner. It was excellent, Rod knows, because he had to watch Ronon moan over lasagna and garlic bread like he was getting a blowjob under the table. It had been--and still is--very disturbing.

"You are doing better, Rod," Teyla says generously. "The lesson is done for the day."

Rod rubs absently at the thigh John viciously attacked with his stick. "Mission tomorrow. Provided I can walk, that is." The revised teams are operating on a trial basis, while Dr. Weir evaluates the effectiveness of the change. Rod actually can't complain too much--just looking at the report he made on PSX-119 makes him itch to go back and explore the facility in full, and God only knows what they'll find if they actually get to sit down and really study it.

This mission, though, is theirs, and Rod's more excited about it than he's been about missions in a long time.

John twirls his stick again before giving both of them to Teyla. It's so annoying that Rod wants to trip him. Turning away, John bows, forehead pressed against Teyla's. "Thank you," he says softly, so softly that Rod almost doesn't hear him.

"I have done nothing," she says back, equally soft. "Have a good evening, John."

With a wave to Ronon, John wanders away, gawky and smiling as he goes out the door, and Rod watches, because John hasn't smiled like that in a while and he wants to savor it. When John vanishes from sight, he turns around, flushing to see his teammates smiling at him with easy indulgence. "What?"

"Nothing," Teyla says innocently, like Rod didn't see Ronon sneaking out of her quarters two nights running. Maybe he used the security cameras the first time, true, but he's biding his time until he can maximize the embarrassment by casually wandering by at some point. Very soon.

Teyla's hands settle on his shoulder, and Rod leans into the touch with closed eyes. "You would do well to attack from his left side," Teyla murmurs. "He has yet to guard that properly."

Rod snickers softly and steps back, waving at Ronon before picking up his bag, going out into a lovely Atlantean evening. Nodding in friendly greeting at passing botanists, he makes his way to the residential quarters, but his feet slow as he comes to John's door. Brushing the door with the tips of his fingers, he touches the crystal.

There's a long, insane few moments where Rod thinks of running, but then John answers, and Rod stares at him, taking in the man he's learning, like he's learning his teammates, like John is learning himself. 

"I'm going back to PSX-119 for a two week research mission," Rod says, leaning into the doorway, trying for casual. John and his backbone stare back in blank surprise. "About a month from now. They did some of the initial ZPM research there, before they built the first prototypes. Considering you're currently our resident expert, I'd like you to be part of my team there."

 "I thought you were transferring me to another team during those," John says. He can't slouch--that backbone is just not made that way--but he tries, arms crossed, looking tense and jumpy and like he might say something epically tactless at any moment. But he doesn't, just looks back, and Rod wishes to God that John hadn't tried to learn to control his tongue.

"Dr. Weir gave you that option. I'd rather you didn't." Rod takes a deep breath. "It turns out that I don't share well at all."

John's mouth quirks. "But Ronon and Teyla are--"

"And if I have to be specific, that part pertains only to you." 

John smiles so suddenly that Rod can't stop himself, reaching out to trace a soft line over the scar on John's cheek, skin warm beneath his fingers.

"Rod, you--," John says, and Rod can hear the warnings edging his voice, but he comes inside anyway, cups John's jaw when he kisses him and drops his bag on the floor as the door slides conveniently closed behind him. John's mouth is soft and terrifyingly still, before callused hands curve against Rod's face and John's tongue brushes his. Even John's back seems to relax. "I--guess--I could."

"I like you," Rod blurts out when he pulls away. John eyes him, the hands on his shoulders tightening briefly. "A lot. I mean--I'm in love with you. And you have to stop looking like that right now or there's no way I can get through the next five minutes without humiliating myself."

"Wow." John blinks slowly. "You're bad at this."

Rod pulls John in, tasting his lips with slow sweeps of his tongue, feeling the instant relaxation in his body that could mean John is happy, or that he's about to trip over the carpet and avoid serious injury only by some kind of miracle. "First times are usually bad," Rod murmurs against John's lips, drawing back with a sharply indrawn breath when John's hands slide down to his ass, pulling him in. He can feel John laughing. "I'll get better."


End file.
